


The Wizards of Ceres

by Mikkeneko



Series: Wizards [1]
Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Angst, Gen, Humor, Intrigue, M/M, Multi, Romance, Suspense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-14
Updated: 2010-12-31
Packaged: 2017-10-12 16:32:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 20
Words: 148,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/126869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mikkeneko/pseuds/Mikkeneko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ceres and Nihon are on the brink of war, and Kurogane and Fai must struggle to balance their loyalties to their home countries with the pressing demands of survival - for themselves, their countries, and for their world. Alternate Universe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fog

**Author's Note:**

> This fic, or at least the first 51k words of it, was written for 2009 NaNoWriMo. It was finally completed in July 2010. A sequel fic will be forthcoming soon, hopefully.

They were ten days out of Ruval and had yet to meet another living soul. Under other circumstances, Fai might have been disturbed by the eerie unpeopled silence of the country they traveled through; up in the high icy reaches of the mountain passes such desolation was to be expected, but even the autumn of the gentler lowlands was like high summer to his senses. This was good arable land, Fai thought, with an abundance of water and vegetation for humans and animals alike; it ought to be supporting a thriving population.

On the other hand, he mused, since their entire mission out here depended on their not being seen, under the circumstances he was just as happy it was deserted.

Fai shaded his eyes with his hand as he looked up into the sky to the east. It shouldn't have been necessary - evening was coming on, the light dimming even further in the clouded sky - but to Fai's eyes, and his eyes only, there was a glow coming from the east that was like a second sun. The wards, build on top of and built into the great ramparts, which marked the end of the empire of Nihon and the beginning of the wilderness. Fai studied what he could see of them from here with narrowed eyes.

The wards of Nihon; a massive magical undertaking, which stretched for miles, a huge amount of power... could they really be as simple as all that? One single spell, repeated a thousand times by a thousand voices, building up each ward like the stones of the wall, built _into_ the wall itself, lending it permanence? Elementary... and yet alien; it was strange, very strange, and his eyes itched to move in and get a closer look. But that was out of the question, no matter how much the temptation presented itself.

Fai heaved a sigh, and brought his hand down from over his eyes. A step in the brittle undergrowth brought his attention back to the present, and he looked up and smiled as Yuuto approached him. The other man - sandy hair around a smooth face, rangy and spare - fetched up a pace away and gave a short bow, hand spread over his heart. "Milord Flowright. I hope I'm not interrupting."

The four soldiers had known each other in Ruval's castle guard before they'd been selected for this mission; Fai had seen some of them in passing, but never to speak to before. Yuuto was good company; quiet, but without the rigid disapproving silence of Dar, and Fai liked him. His smile grew slightly. "Not at all. And I thought we've been over this - this isn't the palace, you know. Just 'Fai' will do."

"Fai," Yuuto allowed, with a quick return smile, which soon faded. "Seen anything?"

Slowly, regretfully, Fai shook his head. "Not here," he said. "So far it all looks uniform. Possibly further south - there may be an irregularity in the barrier further on. From this distance it is difficult to tell."

"Will you be doing any - scrying tonight?" Yuuto asked, tongue tripping only a little over the unfamiliar word. "It's been a long day, and some rough terrain." Implied, though unspoken, was that it was expected that Fai would not hold up so well under the hardship as the soldiers. Fai smiled a little, at the polite oversight.

"Perhaps. It will depend on when and," Fai glanced over to the side, where yet another argument was starting up, "where Kuro-chan eventually decides to let us camp."

Yuuto followed his glance, and shook his head, displeasure twisting his mouth. Such little spats had already become so routine that neither Fai nor the other two soldiers in his party paid it much mind - and would ignore it if they could, were one of the combatants not the patrol leader. Captain Kurotsunagi; like Yuuto, an older man with years of experience... but unlike Yuuto, those years did not seem to have taught him patience.

"Damn right we'll post a watch," his voice snarled, always seeming to be just on the edge of losing his temper. "Just because we haven't seen any enemy action _yet_ doesn't mean we won't see them _soon._ We're in the middle of hostile territory and we don't know what's out there, so we post a watch, two men for four hours, same as every night, now suck it up and stop whining."

"I didn't say we wouldn't," the younger, sharper voice replied, a normally cheerful and upbeat tone worn to aggravation. "All I _said_ was that we hadn't seen _any_ of the sorry bastards in the week and more we've been in their country. You'd think they'd post sentries, send out patrols, keep watch towers, anything that would give us a good run for our money. All we have to do is stay out of sight of the walls and we might as well be invisible. That's _all_ I said. I didn't say anything that I wasn't willing to stand watch tonight, so keep your damn paranoid pants on."

Fai turned away from the glowing bank to the east, inserting himself into the growing fray. "All the better for us that they don't," he said cheerfully. "But perhaps they don't see the need. The wards do all the work for them, eh, Kuro-chan?"

"Would you stop calling me that!" the captain yelled, temper going over the line into the boiling point. "I have a name, damn it, and 'chan' is not a part of it! Don't make me sound like some kind of cutesy pet!"

Behind him, Ryuo shook his head and moved away from his ill-tempered senior, glad to escape the captain's foul company for that of the unit's two older men. That left the two of them facing off; Fai's height leant him a few inches over the other man, but he was not nearly as bulky. Bright blue eyes met furious reddish-brown ones, and Fai smiled cheerfully.

"But I can't help it," Fai protested, "if Kuro-chan has such a _long_ name that is _so_ hard to remember. All the others have nice, sensible names - Dar, Yuuto, Ryuo. See? Easy to say. You're the only one who insists on making things difficult."

"I'M the one who makes things difficult?" he roared, a vein throbbing in his temple. "You're the dumbest, most annoying little beast I've ever had the bad fortune to be stuck babysitting! If we weren't along with you, I bet you'd be waltzing right up to the gates of Edo, asking to borrow a cup of sugar or something!"

He smiled and clapped his hands together, favoring the other man with a deliberately vapid grin. "Then I guess I'm lucky I have big strong Kuro-chan to protect me, aren't I?"

Dar coughed loudly into his hand and Ryuo actually snickered, which of course just infuriated the Kurotsunagi. He glared around at the party indiscriminately, his red-brown eyes making his gaze ferocious.

"We keep moving!" he yelled, settling on an outlet for his foul temper. "We've got two more hours of light before we have to make camp, so let's make to most of it. Ryuo, Dar, get off your asses. We're going south. I don't want to hear any pansy-livered complaints from any of you!"

Although the words were directed at the other three soldiers of the unit, Fai knew that the real target of the revenge was himself. Insults aside, he was more of a scholar by trade, and had never been on an extended march before he'd been assigned to this mission. Yuuto caught up with him as the five men loaded up their various packs and gave him an apologetic smile, reaching to take Fai's paper-heavy pack from him, but Fai just shrugged and grinned back at him, without relinquishing his notes. He would reap what he'd sown.

Besides, if not for the admittedly unchallenging distraction of riling up Kuro-chan, this trip would have no entertainment at _all._

* * *

The forest and the mists rose up about them as they traveled further south; the whole party was restless and uneasy, starting at small noises. When a bird flew right in front of Ryuo's face without warning, he had his sword out in an attack position before he even recognized what it was, and grunted somewhat disconsolately before he put it away. Fai rather thought all of the soldiers, Kurotsunagi especially, preferred open battle to stealth; but there was no helping it in this case.

The clinging fog dampened the evening light and obscured the landscape more than a hundred tree-lengths away, but Fai traveled under the banking light of the wards more than by the fading daylight. It was a break in that steady glow, not any change in the landscape, that fetched his head up.

"What is it?" Ryuo, who was keeping pace near to him, asked curiously. Fai shrugged one shoulder slightly, acknowledging the query without yet having an answer for it. Further ahead, less than a mile down the line... yes, there was a break, without question.

"We turn east here," he said, voice carrying clearly over the silence. Heads turned to stare at him, incredulously.

"East? Into the wall?" Ryuo repeated with disbelief. "Um, Fai-san... I'm pretty sure that thing about knocking on the door of Edo asking for eggs was meant to be a _joke._ "

"Well, it _would_ be the neighborly thing to do -" Fai said as threw a smirk at the joke's originator " - don't you think, Kuro-chan?"

"Shut up," was the growled response.

"Our orders are to stay out of sight," Dar spoke up, the first words he'd said all day. "This is as close to the wall as we dare get."

Fai shook his head. "The wall turns back to the east, here," he said, "and then continues on south. But there's something in that gap that I need to take a closer look at."

"Why would there be a gap here?" Ryuo said doubtfully. "This is all Nihon territory - the wall goes straight south through here on the map."

"It's an old map," Yuuto said, frowning. "Over fifty years old. Things can change, in that time."

"What, you think something in the last fifty years could have brought down the walls?" Ryuo scoffed. "Couldn't be."

"Yes," Fai said.

There was a moment's silence. The captain glowered at the nothingness in the east, then turned that glare on Fai. "How do you know it's safe?" he said peevishly.

"I don't!" Fai replied with a bright smile.

His flippancy provoked the expected explosion. "What the hell? King Ashura will have our hides if we let you go off and get yourself killed! Keeping your dumb butt alive is our responsibility, dammit!"

"And this is mine," Fai said, with unusual seriousness, eyes fixed on the distant glowing bank. "If something brought down the wall, then the wards must have gone down as well, Whatever did that must have left traces itself behind. I need to study those traces, to find out what happened. After all," he said, and turned to face the four soldiers in the gathering gloom. "That's why we're here, aren't we? To find out a way to bring down these walls, so that when King Ashura rides out, at the head of his army, no barrier in the world can prevent him from carving his way straight to the gates of Edo."

* * *

Two hours march had turned into three, as the reconnaissance team turned off their southward route and passed over the invisible boundary that the wards had once drawn. This close in, the lingering echoes of power - to say nothing of the tumbled piles of smashed stone - explicitly confirmed Fai's guess; something had happened here, which had torn down the wards, and the walls had fallen along with them.

The fog was thicker in the gap, dark and heavy around their tiny campfire. Fai's lips quirked in a smile, regarding that light. For all that Kuro-chan had roared and carried on about blowing their secrecy, Fai simply had to have that fire in order to prepare the scrying spells, and as hours passed without any sentry raising an alarm - or, in fact, any sign of living humans within miles - he'd eventually quit complaining about it.

The fire had at least given the others a chance to break out their dried rations, boil some water to soften them up with; not court fare by any means, but at least better than chewing strips of dried leather on the move. The hour was getting closer to midnight now, with Ryuo and Dar sitting the watch after all, while the other two got some sleep. Fai was still working, setting up the tripod and inscribing the runes that he would need; not only long-sight, which he'd been using so far in this trip to observe the wards, but also echo-reading to try and figure out what had happened here in the past. Fifty years ago? It was possible. There was at least a good chance that whatever had happened here had done so before Fai was even born.

The Nihon Empire was huge, and this was the far side of it, from his neck of the mountains. News of events from here was unlikely to have reached as far as... Fai shook his head, as if clearing cobwebs from it. No news of it had reached Ceres, at least, which kept a much closer watch of events happening in their sprawling, hostile neighbor to the south.

No point in speculating when he could just look. Fai finished the last stroke and straightened up with a sigh, rolling his neck and shoulders. It _had_ been a long day, more miles and more hours than he was used to, but he wasn't about to stop now.

Not light now but sound, a world full of rushing murmurs and the shimmering oscillation of bells. Sight was the human's preferred way to take in the world, to focus the attention where it was needed and pick apart the relevant details, but sound _lingered,_ echoes chattering to themselves and building a picture long after the thing itself was gone. He'd been right; unquestionably this had been part of the barricade, once, and the land now ruined around them had once been part of Nihon. He could hear still the faint echoes of human voices, talking and laughing and singing, the buzzing hum of a human community alive. Before the walls had come down.

The shattered, crumbling stones around them were a thousand muted, dying notes; still remembering the shape they'd once held, not yet returned to the flat dull hum of earth. _What were you, once?_ Fai murmured to them, sorting through them, trying to weave together a coherent whole out of the frayed and disparate pieces. A thousand notes, yes, but all different. Spells of protection had been built into them, to be sure, but Fai could see no way that they could have held together.

Unless... Reaching further, Fai thought he heard another sound; a song, this time, one human voice among a thousand. There _had_ been a wizard behind these, after all. Not the one who had built the wall, nor the one who had carved the notes into each stone; but the one who had sung them together, kept them in harmony for day after day, year after year. Behind his - no, _her_ song, Fai thought he could hear the distant undertones of others like her, singing down the line on either side.

Now Fai understood, how the wards were created, and maintained. Not the great production of one wizard, however powerful; no single human being could pour much power into a spell, let alone maintain it for hundreds of year. But a network of lesser magic users, each given the task of maintaining their own section of the walls, keeping the harmony of the stones precisely in tune. Ingenious. And beautiful, he thought with admiration.

And in understanding, he thought he could piece together what had happened, here. Two blows at once, ah. One had come from the outside, unquestionably; some massive assault against the walls themselves. But the wards could have held, would have held, if something had not happened to disrupt the spells maintaining them at precisely the wrong time. Precisely enough, Fai suspected, that it could not have been coincidence.

Fai let the soundscape dissolve around him, and took his hands off the tripod with a sigh. It was a loss, but the day of hard travel had taken its toll on him; he could do no more tonight. The night had gotten colder around them, and the fog thicker; dark and gray tendrils of it wound around their campsite, making it impossible to see much further than the other side of the camp, where Dar was keeping guard outside the circle of firelight.

Ryuo, sitting by the fire, looked up at the sound and the movement. "All finished?" he asked.

"For now. There's not much else I can learn from here," Fai replied. "Tomorrow, we'll go east again. I want to get closer to the wards which have been built up around this gap. They must be newer than the rest, and they may be weaker for that - I'll have to see."

"Get some sleep then," Ryuo advised. He offered one of the camp dishes. "Want some food? I didn't see you eat anything all day."

Fai shook his head. "It's late, and we'll have an early start tomorrow," he said, standing up and brushing charcoal from his hands. "I'm sure Kuro-chan will insist on it."

"Probably," Ryuo agreed with a grin. "But we'll all need to be on our toes. If you say we go east, then we go east, but if this was really part of Nihon once, they might have patrols out. If any of them find us, it will mean a fight." He didn't sound too worried about the prospect; if anything, he sounded like he relished the idea.

Fai shrugged. "We'll have to be careful. But even if there are patrols, the fog should help hide us. I'd be surprised if they could even find each other in this fog, let alone us."

Ryuo blinked, and then his brow wrinkled in puzzlement. "Fog?"

Fai chuckled. "I know. Soup is a better description. I've never seen mist this thick, not even during the spring melt, but the lowlands are a different world, I suppose."

"What are you talking about, Fai?" Ryuo asked earnestly. "There's no fog. It's as clear a night as we ever had up in the passes."

Fai started to reply, then stopped, staring at Ryuo. There wasn't an ingenuous bone in his body; he wasn't joking. But why could he not see what everyone else so plainly could?

Or - was it that _only_ Fai could see this fog?

Fai's eyes widened, and he sat bolt upright as his roving gaze searched the surrounding mist. A freezing dread gripped his throat, and his heart plummeted into his stomach. All these hours heading south, as the fog grew thicker and thicker and never once realizing - "I've been a fool," he breathed.

"What? Fai, what's going on?" Ryuo demanded, but Fai spun away, seizing hold of his scrying spell once more. It wasn't easy to wrench it away from its tightly held focus, to widen the direction into an outwards seeking spiral, but he had no time to rework it. Not east but west, not from the walls and the human habitations but from the dark wilderness behind him.

The fog resisted him now, as no normal weather could have done; he couldn't _see_ anything, but no obscuring spell in the world could hide the shape, the movement, the sheer size of what was coming towards them. Movement sensed in the dark, far away still but approaching as rapidly as a cloud moved to blot out the moon. And big. Very big.

"Fai? My lord? What's happening?" Ryuo's voice penetrated his paralyzed fascination; he shook his head stupidly and looked up to see Dar just now turning towards them from his sentry post. Far too late to run.

Fai threw himself into work, grabbing his staff and beginning to incise the runes on the ground in quick, sizzling strokes. Whispering the words under his breath, he barely had a moment's pause or wind to explain. "Something's coming," he said. "Not from the walls. The other way. We aren't safe here."

The runes were finished and he drew the end of his staff in a broad circle around him, delimiting the effective edge of the shield. "Get within the circle. All of you!"

"What's coming?" Ryuo was bewildered, scrambling to his feet and gripping the hilt of his sword tightly, peering into the still-quiet darkness. On the other side of the fire, the other two were just starting to rouse from their bedrooms. "If it's warriors from Nihon, shouldn't we..."

"It's not that," Fai said, anxiety building to a frenzy within him to make them listen, obey. "It's nothing human. I very much doubt your swords will be any use against it. You must get within the shield, _now!_ "

Three of them obeyed, Dar and Ryuo and Yuuto scrambling over the piles of gear to his side, utterly bewildered and perhaps disbelieving but at least _obeying._ But the fourth rolled the other way, shedding the last of the blankets with a shrug and reaching among the piled goods for his gear. "Kuro-chan, leave it alone! Come here!" Fai said sharply, but was ignored. "Captain Kurotsunagi, _please!_ "

The eerie silence of the night was no more; it had been replaced by a distant rumble that was building to a roar, a darkness that finally even the soldiers could see rushing towards them like a stormfront. Fai looked at the captain, still yards away, and made his agonized decision. He held up his hand and said the final word, and the shield snapped into place, a glowing blue sphere held a meter from his face.

The darkness rushed over them like a tidal wave, the throbbing roar pierced by a teeth-grinding whine. Objects hit the shield and bounced, rushing and tumbling over the far side as they were shoved onwards by their fellows. Blurring darkness against darker sky, it was impossible to make out their forms, or anything other than a welter of scraping legs and thousands of pinpoint, glowing yellow eyes.

Outside the shield, Kurotsunagi stumbled onto his knees as first one, then dozens of the creatures latched onto him, swarming over him. Once the creatures were still Fai and his companions could finally make out their forms, black writing bodies no larger than a man's fist. They looked like rats but they moved like insects, skittering and unearthly, and Kurotsunagi's surprised grunt as he was forced to his knees turned quickly to thin, agonized screams as the creatures burrowed into clothing and skin, piercing his flesh. They swelled like balloons - one of them actually burst with the frenzy of its feeding, bright blood and black gore spraying through the air as their victim fell sprawled onto the ground.

"Captain!" Ryuo wailed, actually taking a lurching step forward as though he could go to Kurotsunagi's aid, but it was far too late; already the screams were fading into strangled, animal sounds, and the whining hum of the creatures feeding drowned it out. Not that he could have gotten through the barrier anyway, now. Fai held his hands up and steady, although already he was numb from the constant battering against his magic.

Dar whirled on Fai. "Where the hell did these things come from?" he demanded, shock and panic overcoming his usual reticence. "What _are_ they?"

"This is what the wards of Nihon are for," Fai said through gritted teeth, mind working overtime as the pieces - at last - fell into place. "Not for us. Not for any human army. These are what the wards are built to keep out."

"And we're on the wrong side of the wards," Yuuto completed the thought for them, his face bleak and bleached. "We've got to get out of here."

"No!" Ryuo shouted, reason lost to grief and rage. "Those things killed Captain Kurotsunagi! We can't just run away!"

"Something else is coming," Fai said, voice distant, barely attending to this debate, if debate it was. This swarm of - of parasites, horrific as it was, could not have accounted for the power and the danger that he had glimpsed behind the fog. "This is just the first wave. The real monster hasn't arrived yet."

"If it's something we can hit, then we can kill it!" Ryuo insisted, sword still drawn, futilely seeking a target.

"How do you plan to do that when the moment you step outside the shield, you'll be reduced to bones?" Dar snarled. The place that Kurotsunagi had fallen was marked only by the dark cluster of carrion creatures still crawling over and around him, but there were hundreds - thousands more to join the assault on the blue barrier, battering with teeth or claws or half-seen wings.

"Milord Fai, what can we do?" Yuuto appealed him directly. "Do we... do we stay and fight?"

"We can't fight this," Fai said, still in that faraway tone. Just maintaining the shield took all of his strength; his hands were already shaking as he brought one of them down and began to write a new spell on the air, inscribing a second circle within the boundary of the first. "We've got to get out of here, now."

What he was about to try was risky, even dangerous; portal magic was unstable and not well studied, but when it interacted with other spells it tended to do so violently. But Fai could see no other way out of this trap; they were besieged, taking all of his strength just to shield the four of them from the horrific assault battering them. And when the new threat arrived -

And the new threat arrived _now,_ with the glittering line of the portal only half-formed. It was impossible to see it clearly, through the rushing, beating limbs of the black creatures that still swarmed over and around the barrier. But the glowing yellow eyes, round as coins in a head that must have been a yard across, loomed over the shield, crouching from a height of twenty feet to bring its face closer to the shield. To either side of them, dimly glimpsed through the rush of bodies, thin spindly legs like tent poles seemed to unfold onto the ground.

The monster lifted its head, shifting the point of the featureless yellow gaze a little beyond them, and a hole opened in the middle of the body like a mouth gaping. A foul stench and a stiff breeze ran through all four of them, and the creatures that had brought down Kurotsunagi suddenly swarmed up in an agitated flurry, until they were sucked backwards into the gap, which closed around them.

Fai had not stopped for one second casting their escape spell, although his voice was shaking almost as badly as his hands, now. He was almost at the limit of his strength, he could feel the shield beginning to crash, but in just one moment more it would no longer matter -

One moment too soon, a limb like the trunk of a tree reared into the dimness and slammed down on top of them. The shield buckled, the white and blue glow spilling into the just-completed lines of the portal spell, the two magics broken and intermingled.

The shield collapsed into him, like a net made of blue fire that froze from his skin clear through to his heart. A moment later, the world around him exploded back out into flames, but by that time Fai was too far gone to care.


	2. First Meetings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the countryside is lovely this time of year, and Fai meets a demon-hunter of Nihon.

When Fai came to his senses, visions of fire still filled his dazed eyes. A blue-white glow seemed to pulse through his vision, and when he managed to raise his hand to touch his face, all he could feel was a sharp, tingling numbness. The shield spell must have rebounded on him, wrapping tight around his body like wire; he tried to climb to his feet, and could barely force himself up on one elbow before his numbed limbs collapsed again.

On the second try he managed to at least roll over, and get a dim, hazy vision of the battlefield. Parts of it _were_ still on fire, the roaring flames muted to sullen embers. Through a choking, reeking smoke -- quite real this time, no magical concealment in nature -- he could see the twitching hulk of the monster. So Fai had been wrong, sort of, about not being able to fight it. Killing it had required nothing more than him losing control of his magic in a truly spectacular fashion, probably visible to anyone with any sensitivity for a hundred miles around.

Closer to hand, three charred human corpses sprawled on the raked ground within a hands reach of him. One of them still clutched fingers charred to bone on a broken, blackened sword hilt.

Fai flinched away from the bodies, clenching his teeth as he shuddered in revulsion. His stomach heaved in protest, and he spent a long moment curled over himself on the ground, retching dry heaves and coughing up bile. _That was my spell that did that. My doing. No demon did that to them._

When the spasms quelled, he forced himself to his hands and knees and managed to drag himself for at least three paces before he collapsed again. His mouth burned with bile, and the iron tang of blood. He could barely feel his legs at all, and he had to stop with his forehead pressed against the scorched ground in order to try and force a deep breath. Flight, clearly, was out of the question. Fighting didn't seem to be on the menu either.

 _And which will come first? A patrol from Nihon, to investigate the disturbance, or another one of those monsters?_ And was there really anything to choose between them...? Discovery at the end of their mission would destroy all their attempts at secrecy, and Ceres would be worse off than if they'd never gone. On the other hand, the soldiers from Nihon were unlikely to eat him after they killed him. He choked back a hysterical giggle at the thought, which quickly turned into a hacking cough. _Or before, like poor Kuro-chan._

Hide? Of the three available options, it seemed most feasible. If there was anywhere in this field of ruin that he could hide. He raised his head, trying to force the world into focus against the swoops and dips that the landscape seemed to want to make around him. Some sort of cave would be best, if one could be found on this wretched flat soft ground....

His blurring vision crossed a bank of darkness, punctuated by glowing yellow orbs. _Oh. Not hiding, either._

The second monster -- Fai could only make out the general form in the smoky darkness, but it seemed less of an insect and more a hulking, many-clawed beast of some kind -- seemed warier than the first. It paced back and forth around the still-twitching corpse of the first one, emitting weird rumbling noises as if uncertain of what had befallen its companion. The lamp-like yellow gaze swiveled between the wreck and Fai, and for a moment Fai hoped that the association of danger would be enough to warn it off.

It was too much to hope for. The creature went tense and sinuous, all glittering black in the smoldering flames, and Fai hardly had time to anticipate the spring before it was on him.

Pure reflex let him dodge the first blow, skidding sideways out of its path in a tumble that left him completely disoriented; it took him a moment to remember where the sky was, let alone the monster. The second blow caught him across the back, which at least served to orient him again; and he turned and brought his hand up in a flash of unshaped, reflexive magic as the monstrous head snapped down towards him.

The air rang with the noise of the clash; it deflected the snapping fangs -- beak? -- but the force of the reaction slammed him into the ground hard enough to wind him. The monster roared and reared back, slashing down with one giant claw, and the right side of Fai's vision went up in blind red.

The world was full of clamor and chaos; through the red haze over his vision he saw banks of black clouds writhe and collide; flashes of fire against smoky darkness, and a spraying arc of black -- or was that red? He was too blind to tell, and too dizzy and suffocated to duck and dodge any longer, to do anything but feel the world go mad around him and wonder if he was already dead.

There was a brief period of silence, broken only by the sizzling of the fire and the ringing in his own ears. Fai closed his eyes with a sigh.

He felt as much as heard the impacts of footsteps approaching him, and stopping less than an arm's reach away. With a certain morbid curiosity Fai opened his eyes, and focused on a pair of hard, black chitinous legs only a few feet from his face. It took some effort, craning to see around the red glow that blanked out the right half of his vision, to follow them upwards.

The black edges of the form were amorphous, seeming to billow in the hot and sulfurous breeze. The towering figure was topped by a jagged, horny-plated head, but it was the eyes that startled him -- not glowing unearthly yellow, like the other two had been, but reflecting a deep red color in the firelight. Fai blinked, slowly, and waited for the thing to make the next move.

The next move was to prod him in the ribs, very uncomfortably, with a hard and sharp edge of its foot. "Oi, wizard," came a growling voice, and Fai started with a shock as the shape fell into place as a _man_ , albeit one covered from head to toe in black-plated armor. "Are you alive?"

A dizzy relief broke over Fai, making him almost want to laugh; premature, maybe, but it seemed he wasn't going to be eaten in the next five seconds and that was definitely very funny. "What would you do," he said, and had to stop and gasp for breath as the words came out in a sort of croak, "what would you do if I said no?"

The black figure snorted, thunderously, and then shrank, bringing the alarming red eyes closer; crouching down, Fai identified hazily. An arm as black-shiny and plated as the rest of him reached out and gripped Fai's arm, cold and hard. "Get up," he said. "There will be more of them coming."

It took some struggle on both Fai's part and that of his unexpected helper to get him first to sit up, where he swayed as the world tilted dangerously under him, and then to his feet; he never would have been able to keep his balance, or for that matter support his weight, without leaning heavily on the stranger's shoulder. Something seemed to be wrong with his ankle, which kept wanting to twist in odd directions and screamed in pain every time he tried to put weight on it; but Fai supposed better it than him.

Without waiting for any suggestions or questions from Fai, the stranger started to haul them off away from the smoldering ruins. The smoking fog clung as close around as ever, but he seemed to know where he was going. _Of course he would know this territory,_ Fai thought, _this is his country_. He could only be a native of Nihon, although Fai had not heard that they had red eyes. From this upright perspective the man did not loom as monstrously as Fai had first thought, but he still topped Fai by a head. It was somewhat startling; ever since he'd reached his full growth Fai was used to looking down over the shorter inhabitants of Ceres, whom he outstripped in height if not in weight. But this man made him feel almost like a child again.

"Are all the men from Nihon as tall as you?" he asked, somewhat to his own surprise; it didn't really seem to be the time or place for such a thing, but his mouth seemed to be running away from him. "I'd always thought they were short." Unless they were breeding giants behind the walls to fight against the demons, a thought that struck him as unexpectedly so funny that he had to snicker.

The stranger swiveled his head to look down at him, red eyes narrowed. Closer up Fai could see that he was wearing a steel helmet that covered the entire head and face, leaving only the eyes exposed. Practical to expose as little skin as possible, he supposed, if one were going up against demons like the swarm that had overtaken the captain... The reminder broke him out of his shocky euphoria, and he gasped with pain. The stranger said only, "You're from Ceres?"

"Lately," Fai said, not feeling like going into the details.

"The others as well?" A jerk of his head back in the direction of the slaughter they had left. Fai gritted his teeth against a stab of pain.

"Yes," he said. "They were sent along to... to protect me."

"Doesn't seem to have worked out that way, does it?" the other man said. "They're down, and you're still standing."

"Still leaning, more like," Fai laughed again, but this time with a bitter edge on it. He stumbled over some hidden snag in the rough ground, and jolted painfully on his feet; he bit his lip till he tasted blood, but he couldn't stop from blurting out, "It was my spell that killed them. Not the demons. I lost control, and..." He lost control, and other people suffered for it. Some things never seemed to change.

It was hard to read the stranger's expression, when only his eyes showed above the black metal faceplate, but his voice was unmoved. "Probably better for them that you did."

Fai tripped again, and this time his dragging hands pulled his escort to a stop. "What?" he demanded.

"Keep moving," the man growled with an edge in his voice. He was staring out into the darkness, back the way they had come, although Fai could see nothing out of the mists. He took a deep breath, gritted his teeth, and limped on.

"What did you mean?" he said when he was able to unstick his jaw again.

"I mean at least they died clean. Better the fire should get them than the vermin. It's not just blood they're after, you know. They feed on souls as well. It's not... not a good way to die."

That really, really didn't help. For a moment nausea overwhelmed Fai's body again, leaving him doubled over, and the world faded to gray patches, with the vision flashing before his eyes of the captain's jerking body as the swarm overtook him, the thin screams that died to nothing. _Kuro-chan..._

"What did you just say?" the stranger demanded sharply, voice taut.

Fai realized that he'd spoken aloud, unintentionally. He drew a deep shaky breath, although he kept his head down. "Did anyone ever tell you that you are really, truly terrible at this comforting people thing?" he inquired in a muffled voice.

The stranger snorted, but didn't deign to respond. He hovered over Fai in uncomfortable silence, while Fai struggled to get his breathing back under control. "Look," he finally said, a gruff note in his voice. "We have to get moving. If you can't walk, then say something. I suppose I could try to carry you."

The offer surprised Fai enough that he straightened up, blinking floating spots out of his vision. He eyed the larger man in trepidation, especially the layered, jagged edges topping the shoulders of his armor. "What, over your shoulder like a bag of grain? If the demons didn't finish me off, I'm pretty sure that would."

"It's either that _or_ they finish you off. Take your pick."

"I'll pass. These things are deadly," Fai said, and slapped the metal plates of the shoulder, to no great effect except to sting his hand. "But thanks for the offer. It's very sweet."

"It's not --!" the warrior started to protest heatedly, then broke off with a growl. "It is _not_ the time to stand around arguing about this. Can you walk or can't you? I'm going."

"I can walk," Fai said.

The next stretch of ground robbed them both of breath for talking for a time; the ground turned along a ridge and then plunged into a rocky gullet, which the stranger led them down with sure and steady knowledge. They wound steadily downward for over a mile of dark scrub brush and loose gravel, until the gully suddenly opened up in a sharp left turn to a wider basin, sheltered on three sides with rock faces. A large, well cared-for horse -- black, of course -- raised its head and whickered a greeting.

The tall man made a satisfied noise as he saw the place -- almost like the horse, Fai thought with humor -- and relaxed perceptibly as he strode forward towards a dark pile that revealed itself to be camping gear. He pushed Fai down unceremoniously onto what turned out to be a saddle beside a pile of blankets, and then turned away, reviving the banked coals of the fire into something a little brighter and then rising to go tend to the horse.

Fai just sat for a while and tried to pull his scattered thoughts in some order. Sitting still at least helped dispel some of the dizziness, although like the ringing in his ears and the blind patches, it seemed to be something that came and went. At length, though, he regained the breath to ask, "Should you really be doing that? Won't it attract more of those, those... monsters?"

"No reason not to," his rescuer replied brusquely, returning to the now-brighter fire. "They can smell human blood much further off than they can smell smoke or see firelight. But we should be safe, here." He jerked his head over to a group of shadows in the corner of the ravine; Fai stared blankly in the direction indicated, but couldn't make out more than a jumble of timbers and stones, and gave up trying to divine what the other man meant.

"You seem to know a lot about them." This leading question did not immediately elicit a response, so Fai tried a slightly more direct line. "What are they called, anyway?"

Again no response; the tall man put a battered, cast iron camp kettle over the fire, and turned his back on Fai, rummaging through the baggage. Fai sighed, only slightly exaggerated for effect. "What are _you_ called, for that matter? I like to know the names of people who save me from certain horrific death."

"Happens often, does it?" The man turned around; he'd stripped off his metal gloves, set them with a scraping sound on top of one of the packs, and reached up and took off his helmet.

Fai blinked, and then his good eye widened as the man's face was revealed for the first time. He was much, much younger than Fai had thought, by the voice and height -- probably no more than his early twenties, much younger than Fai himself. He had a head of spiky, jet black hair that blended smoothly with his dusky skin, and set off his eyes strikingly. Strong, even features, set now in practiced lines of focus and calm determination; his rough speech and strong muscles might lead one to think he was nothing more than a common thug, but that all ended when you met his eyes.

"Kurogane," the man said shortly, breaking Fai out of his fascination. "Late of Suwa. You?"

"Fai D Flowright at your service," Fai choked out around a suddenly awkward tongue. _Oh, Gods, another Kuro-chan._ "-- out of Ceres, as you somehow already guessed."

"Wasn't hard. No one from Nihon would be stupid enough to be outside the wards at night."

"You were," Fai observed brightly, and received a dark scowl in return.

"I know what I'm doing. I'm not a bloody amateur, stumbling around in the dark like a pack of chicks walking happily into the cooking pot." Kurogane seated himself on a pile of saddle blankets not far away from Fai's perch and reached into a satchel. With his hands now bare, he unwrapped folds of linen cloth from around something -- some sort of bread, from the smell of it -- and broke it in half. He bit into half of it, and held the other half out to Fai.

Fai eyed it with concealed loathing, and shook his head, pressing the back of his hand to his mouth to suppress any unwanted spasms. Around a mouthful of bread, Kurogane shrugged, and continued, "And no one in Nihon has hair that color or eyes like those." His own startling eyes slanted over, pinning Fai's gaze. "Or use magic like that."

Anything he said would have revealed too much, so Fai just shrugged helplessly -- and regretted it, the movement did something nasty to his ribcage -- and sat watching, slightly hunched over, as Kurogane poured water from the kettle over the linen rag he'd been using, and used it to clean off his hands.

But the next moment Kurogane was in his personal space, and Fai tried to scramble backwards as those deadly-looking hands reached for his face. "Sit still," Kurogane growled, with a note of command in his voice that froze Fai in place. "I want a look at that eye."

Fai clenched his hands by his thighs, and forced his spine to stiffen as Kurogane invaded his space, shoving his hair out of the way and prizing at his eyelid. Waves of pain and flashes of hot color washed over him, and he tried to jerk away, but Kurogane had gotten a hold of the back of his head and his grip was iron-hard. It seemed like ages before the other man was satisfied and withdrew, turning back towards the fire. His breath was coming in spasmodic gasps, but he wrested control back long enough to say, "Well?"

"Could have been worse." Kurogane dropped a clean cloth into his lap, damp and slightly warm from the boiled kettle water. "Probably scar, but you'll keep the eye, at least. Clean it up much as you can and bandage it, those scratches will fester if you don't keep them clean."

Fai complied in silence; when he'd finished wiping his face and eye as thoroughly as he could bear to, he took the clean bandages the other man passed to him and clumsily made a pad over the eye.

Kurogane waited to ask until Fai had cleaned his face and hands -- mostly -- of the gore that had bled from the cut over his eye and from his nose and split lip. Then he sat back on the pile of horse blankets, posture deliberately relaxed, although his hand rested as-if-casually on the hilt of his black sword, a nuance which was not lost on Fai. "So," he said.

Fai eyed that sword warily. Now that he had better light to see by, he could identify not just one of three weapon hilts on the warrior's person -- a large one crosswise on his back, which he rather thought had made short work of the demon, a smaller one on his hip, and what looked like a dagger hilt strapped to his chest. "So, what?" he hazarded.

"So what is a wizard from Ceres doing snooping around in demon country outside the wards of Nihon?"

Fai smiled to cover his panic, while his mind raced for a way to avoid the question. "But the countryside is so lovely this time of year," he said lightly. "Would you believe I was just visiting?"

Kurogane gave him a sardonic look. "No," he said. "I wouldn't."

Fai shrugged.

"With the border clashes heating up in the foothills, it's only a matter of time before Ceres launches an all-out attack on us," Kurogane went on. "So, four soldiers and a wizard creep east and south around the border, and go poking around in the ruins of Suwa. Obviously you were sent either to make a surprise attack to open the war, or as spies. Five people seems a bit short for a raiding party, even if you're a lot more formidable than you look. So that leaves espionage."

There was a short silence, which Fai finally broke with "Espionage is such an ugly word, don't you think? I much prefer the term reconnaissance."

"Spying," Kurogane said firmly. He tilted his head to the side, and his eyes narrowed. "But you weren't expecting the _oni_."

"No," Fai agreed softly, and a cold shiver ran up his spine. "We didn't know about those. No one in Ceres had seen one before. Where did they come from?"

"West, years ago." Kurogane settled himself in comfortably, as if prepared to expand at length on his subject. "There used to be just a few of them, but more have come over time. And they've gotten stronger over the years. No place outside the wards is safe at night, now, and lately they'll even come out during the day. It's only a matter of time before they move north, too, and then they'll be as much your problem as they have been ours."

"They can't be too much of a problem, if all Nihon warriors are as strong as this one." Fai smiled -- it was meant to be flattery, if teasing -- but Kurogane seemed genuinely offended by the tone.

"Don't be a fool," Kurogane snarled, real anger in his tone. "You've seen what the swarm alone can do to people. They don't go after animals -- just humans. The bigger _oni_ can batter through solid stone walls, and there's damn few things that can cut through their armor. A pack of demons traveling together can strip a town to its bones in minutes. "

Fai glanced around, thinking not just of this desolate burrow, but of the scattered, crushed rubble of walls and buildings that they'd passed over, coming in here. Of the fading echoes of human voices, lost in the stones. "Is that what happened here?"

Kurogane stiffened. "What?"

"To this country." Fai watched his reactions carefully, putting the pieces together. _The ruins of Suwa_ , Kurogane had called it earlier, when interrogating him about his purpose, and _of Suwa_ , he had named himself. And his familiarity with the lay of the countryside... "This used to be your home, didn't it?"

Kurogane said nothing for a long, long moment, and Fai wondered if he'd finally crossed the line. The tension stretched in the silence, until Fai was wondering if he should make a joke out of it, laugh it off. Abruptly Kurogane stood, pulled something from the pile behind him; he was nearly knocked off his perch by the horse blanket that Kurogane threw towards him. "Get some sleep," he growled. "Tomorrow's going to be difficult. There's no way past those things without killing them, but you always fight them in the daylight if you can."

Fai caught the blanket, blinked and looked up at him. "Shouldn't we keep a watch?" he said.

"They won't come here," Kurogane stated with confidence, "but if they do, I'll hear them long before they get close."

Kurogane turned his back to Fai and moved away. He did not seem to have a bedroll himself, Fai observed, but seated himself with his back to the fire and his head bowed, one knee braced. He didn't take off the rest of his armor, and he kept the smaller sword in his hand; a practice, Fai couldn't help observing, that Kuro-chan could have stood to learn. Too late now. "You can stay awake if you like," Kurogane added, without turning around, "but if you exhaust yourself you'll be easy prey. Just try not to die in your sleep."

There were a few minutes of shuffling as Fai tried to arrange a soft place, or at least not too uncomfortable hard place, to sleep on the ground. The throbbing in his head was coming back with epic proportions. He supposed, in the abstract, that he ought to take the opportunity presented to escape, try to flee back to Ceres. But he was too damn tired tonight.

"There's just one thing I don't understand," Fai said. He had to take a deep breath before he could ask the next question. "What you said is true. I am a wizard of the palace court at Ceres, and I came south to spy on you. I am your enemy. So why did you save me?"

Kurogane didn't reply at first, and Fai wondered if he'd somehow already gone to sleep. But just when Fai had stopped expecting a reply, he spoke, his voice was laced with deeply buried anger. "Because _my_ enemy is the demons," he said. "They don't discriminate between man and child, noble or peasant, and they don't distinguish between Ceres and Nihon. And so neither do I."

Fai was still wondering at the implications of that, when dark sleep overtook him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Strictly medically speaking, Kurogane should not have let Fai go to sleep unsupervised; he was badly concussed and in danger of slipping into a coma. So why did he? The short answer is that Kurogane is not a doctor; he only knows rudimentary first aid and medical techniques, mostly what he can use to patch himself up after a fight. In our world, that tidbit is so well known as to be memetic -- "If someone has a concussion, don't let them fall asleep" -- even if we don't know the medical justification behind it. But in this world medical science is not so advanced that this fact would be universal knowledge, so Kurogane is not aware of the danger that can be posed by head injuries. Fortunately, Fai was lucky this time and his injury did not get worse during the night.


	3. First Partings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the demons are summarily dispatched, and Fai and Kurogane part ways.

Kurogane woke just as morning was beginning to creep into the sky, the dying deep blue of night just giving way to the grays of daybreak. The sky was still overcast, so the sun wouldn't be seen for hours if it came out at all today, but there was light enough to see by and that was the main thing,

The other main thing was that he could sense an oni -- two -- and close. He took a slow, quiet breath, hand tightening on Souhi's hilt although he did not, yet, draw her from the sheath. They were prowling around the lip of the dell, not yet willing to force themselves through the lingering blessings of the ruined _jinja_ , but they weren't likely to go away any time soon, either. Kurogane was willing to bet that the wizard had left a blood trail, coming here, and cursed the luck -- another bolt-hole compromised.

Unless, of course, neither of these two lived to carry word back to their fellows. Kurogane's lips curled in a smile, almost unwillingly. It was always so nice to be able to kill two birds with one demon.

The fire was dead in ashes; he hadn't bothered to bank it before going to sleep, since he'd not counted on staying here much past dawn anyway. In the chill dampness of the autumn dawn he stood, stretching out the lingering stiffness, and reached for his helm and gauntlets. He pulled some food and water out of his supplies knapsack and chewed dutifully at it, fueling up for the exertion ahead. Running low on water, although that could be refilled at the stream; enough food to last for a week more, although perhaps not if it were split two ways. Reminded, Kurogane turned to walk over to his unlikely charge.

The wizard from yesterday was still asleep, but not -- Kurogane checked his breathing, shallow but steady -- dead. It was impossible to tell his condition by his coloring, as his light hair and fair skin looked shockingly pale to Kurogane's eyes anyway; when he'd first arrived on the scene he'd mistaken the wizard for an old man, and had been surprised to find that he was barely more than a child.

Young or old, he thought the wizard looked somewhat better than last night. With bruising and cuts at least marginally attended to, some of the strain eased out of those delicate features. Were all the men of Ceres as pretty as women, Kurogane had to wonder, or was it just something about using magic that did it to a man? Stupid to speculate. Kurogane frowned down at him, rubbing his hand over his eyes to chase the last of the night's weariness away.

He still wasn't sure exactly what to do about this stray. Having caught an enemy combatant on what _was still technically_ Nihon soil, he supposed he had an obligation to take him to the nearest gate and turn him in. The prospect didn't fill Kurogane with much enthusiasm; as a spy, he'd almost certainly be crucified, which would sort of negate the purpose of saving his life in the first place.

He wasn't sure why the idea of this man being executed in that manner turned his stomach quite so strongly, but it was enough for him to dismiss the idea out of hand. Ceres and Nihon were not officially at war yet, and he'd caught the man on _Suwa_ land. _His_ land. He still had some say in who came and who went here, even if it was mostly only inhabited by wild animals and the occasional oni, nowadays.

On the other hand, if he wasn't going to take him prisoner, what _was_ he going to do? Turning him loose in the wilderness -- alone, half-blind, on foot, injured and concussed, hardly seemed a preferable fate. It was three days hard ride through the wilds back to the northern border, even assuming that Kurogane was willing to give him his horse, which he wasn't. Kurogane sighed.

Either the noise was enough to disturb him or Kurogane had just been looming for too long, but the wizard suddenly stirred, turning his face upwards and opening his good eye. He still didn't seem to be focussing right, but the color still startled Kurogane -- even more intensely blue in the silver dawn than they had been last night by firelight. "Time to march already, Kuro-chan?" he murmured.

 _"What_ did you call me, wizard?" Kurogane only managed to keep his voice down with an effort -- there were still oni out there, after all.

The wizard blinked at him slowly, then pushed himself abruptly into a sitting position, catching himself on his arms as he swayed. He reached up to touch his bandaged eye, wincing, and then shifted his focus back to Kurogane, and smiled _far_ too cheerfully for the time and the setting. "Would you prefer to be called something else? Kuro-pon? Kuro-rin? Kuro-chama?"

Kurogane gritted his teeth. "I'd _prefer_ that you call me by my name. I know I told you last night -- it's _Kurogane."_

The wizard hummed a little, then shook his head, although not without a slight wince. "No, that's much too long and complicated for me to remember. How about Kuro-tan? That's much cuter, simpler and more elegant. Or perhaps Kuro-black, to go with the armor, and the hair, _and_ the horse --"

Kurogane stared in disbelief. "You know, I'd been assuming it was the hit on the head last night that knocked you silly, but I'm starting to rethink that." He was also beginning to rethink his aversion to seeing Fai executed as a spy.

Fai just smirked at him. Kurogane shook his head and turned away, settling his helmet over his head. The wizard watched his preparations closely, and then said, in a more serious tone, "Is there trouble?"

"Only what I expected. Two --" Kurogane gestured up at the lip of the dell; he couldn't actually see the oni up there, but he could feel their lurking presence. "Waiting for us to come out."

"Just like two cats at a mousehole." The wizard nodded understanding, then shifted around, pulling free of the horse blanket and bracing himself as though to stand. "What should we do?"

" _We_ don't do anything," Kurogane said promptly. _"You_ stay here. I'm going to go take care of them."

"What, and let Kuro-chan go off to fight the monsters all by his lonesome?" His good eye widened in feigned disbelief. "I couldn't possibly allow that!"

"Who said you had any say in the matter?" Kurogane snapped. "I work alone. You can't even walk in a straight line, let alone be any use in a fight."

"I killed one of those things yesterday," Fai wheedled. "I can help --" And he was actually trying to get up and walk, gods, did the man have no sense at all?

" _I_ would prefer not to be flash-fried by your _help_ ," Kurogane snapped, and had the mixed satisfaction of seeing the wizard flinch, his smile falter. For this at least, Fai had no response, and Kurogane turned his back on him, going into his pack to pull out what he'd need.

"So you've killed one, great. I've killed hundreds. Let the professionals do their job, and stay here like a good boy. Here." He unstrapped the dagger from its place on his baldric, and tossed it at the man, who grabbed at it in the air, fumbling the catch. "Keep this. If anything gets past me, it'll be up to you."

The wizard looked at the sheathed _tantou_ in his hands -- double-bladed, barely twelve inches, it should be light enough even for him to wield -- and back at him, a bemused smile on his face. "Thank you, Kuro-tan, but I don't know how useful this is going to be."

Given how awkwardly he held it, Kurogane wondered too, but "Any weapon is better than none. Your stupid staff is in pieces somewhere out there, and this is better than fighting them with your hands. Oh -- take these, too." He tossed a couple of wrapped packages after the knife, which were caught -- barely -- with his arms against his body. Somewhat bewildered, the wizard pulled at the straps until he revealed the flask and wrapped hardbread; he stiffened oddly, looking at them, and his smile flattened out. "Eat," Kurogane told him.

Slowly, deliberately, Fai rewrapped the packages and put them aside. "No, thank you," he said calmly.

"That wasn't an offer."

"I don't wish to eat at this time."

"It wasn't a request, either. If you're going to be my backup, then you're going to be under my command for at least the next hour. A soldier has to take care of his body, or he'll be useless, and I have no use for useless things. _Eat_." He edged the word with a deep snarl of command. The wizard gave him a startled, wary glance which he countered with a warning glare; slowly, reluctantly, Fai pulled the food back towards him, although Kurogane didn't grunt satisfaction and turn away until he saw him take the first bite.

He left the wizard in the place of safety, and began to climb the dew-wet slides of the ravine towards the waiting oni.

It was quiet. Gravel crunched under his boots as he climbed the slope; with no half-conscious wizard dragging along, he was able to take the short route up the gullies, and climbed out onto the tableland within minutes. The sky was brightening overhead, drawing long gray shadows along the ground; the dark wet wood of the trees drew black shadows of their own in the growing light.

Plenty of swinging room, here; he left Souhi in her sheath and unstrapped Ginryuu from his back. Nothing was in sight, yet, but he could feel the foul presence of the oni skulking around. There was no rush to meet them; they would come to him, oh yes. He grinned tightly, and drew a deep breath, centering his ki.

The world narrowed down to black and white again; no splashes of red blood, no flash of distracting blue. It was just him and hard-edged steel, against the oni, against the world; they could come at him one or two or a hundred at a time, and he'd take them all on.

A movement to his left drew his attention, and he turned to face it, surging out of the morning mist; it wasn't too big, as they went, only the size of a small house. It arched a long, scaled neck and hissed at him, its triangular head crammed with fangs. Kurogane was unimpressed, especially since the posturing was mostly just to draw his attention while its partner attempted to circle around behind him.

"Come on, you bastards," he called out to them, switching Ginryuu to a one handed grip and spreading his arms wide. "Come and get me!"

A blood-curdling hiss, and they dove at him, almost but not quite perfectly coordinated on the spot on which he stood. But his footing was solid and he was ready for it; when they struck he was not there, already jumping to the side and he turned as he went, slicing back along his path with the full force of his swing behind Ginryuu's cutting edge. The demon behind him shrieked as its open mouth ran full on to his blade; he could feel the impact of the serrated teeth grating against the spine of the blade, and he jerked it back, sending black blood and broken teeth flying.

The two oni slammed against each other, scrambling and tangling together for a moment before they sorted themselves out and sprang apart, each moving to circle him from opposite direction. Kurogane watched them warily, turning to keep them in his sights, sizing them up with a long-practiced eye. The big one was a spitter; the other one, unquestionably a host, although it hadn't released the swarm yet. Until it did, it was the less dangerous of the two; Kurogane kept it in his peripheral vision, and turned to face the big one.

He moved an instant before they did, driving forward across the muddy ground; the oni screamed and fell back a step under the ferocity of the attack, and Kurogane turned, moving to flank it and place it between him and the second oni. Ginryuu skidded across the oni's side as he moved, but the armoring was solid, and barely showed a scratch from the full force of the blow.

From there it devolved into a game of lunge and strike, parry and fall back; he took advantage of the open space to try to keep the bigger oni in the way of the smaller one, although that wouldn't work forever. The thing's limbs darted out in lizard-quick movements, huge claws like a crab's pincers clacking towards him as though to cut him in half. Kurogane dodged what he could, blocked what he could not dodge, and absorbed the hits that he could not block. His blood sang in his ears, and a sharp feral grin pulled at the corners of his mouth. This was what he was made for, this was what he _lived_ for, all others be damned.

This one had solid armoring all around the neck and chest, overlapping plates that rippled over its joints which not even Kurogane could punch through easily. But along the spine of the thing, up to where the neck met the back of the head the movements seemed looser, disjointed -- as though it hadn't been put together quite right at the top of it. _There, yes._ He shifted his stance, switching his grip on Ginryuu's hilt.

The oni must have sensed the change in his posture, sensed something, because it screeched again -- the shrill sound made his bones ache -- and fell back, almost uneasy in its movements. The other oni surged around it, its eager head pushing ahead of its four splayed limbs, but for a moment -- just for one moment -- they were getting in each other's way, each hampering the movement of the other.

Kurogane pushed forward, covering the intervening distance with a lightness that belied the pounding force of his steps; the smaller oni thrust its head towards him, dripping spittle and gore from its torn mouth. Kurogane turned and raised his blade, held level above the height of his own head, and with a downward slash tore out one of the bulbous, glowing-yellow eyes. It screamed, a bubbling sound far worse than the avian screeching of its partner, and orange blood spattered over the arm and side of his armor. He could hear it hiss as it corroded the metal, but would take minutes to eat through the heavy plate, and in minutes it would all be over.

The small oni fell fell back, leaving Kurogane with clear space. He jumped; straight towards his target, the pincer-claws snapped towards him and missed, and then he landed with a heavy jolt, right on the black carapace. He reversed his two-handed grip on Ginryuu, and plunged it straight down, the full length of the blade into the soft, armor-less spot at the back of the oni's head.

The oni's dying convulsion flung him away, and his sword was wrenched from his hands. A bit-off curse forced itself from his lips as he slammed against the ground, but he rolled with the momentum and came back up to his feet, ripping Souhi from her sheath at his side.

One oni down, one to go; and despite its smaller size and lack of armor plating, the more dangerous of the two. Unlike some of others Kurogane had faced, there was no way this abomination could ever be mistaken for any kind of animal; it went on four splayed limbs under an elongated body, but the limbs ended in clawed human hands, and the head as it thrust from the long, flexible neck had a man's shape to it, patches of raggedy dark hair falling down in clumps. One bulbous eye was collapsed and leaking acid, but the other one turned on him as it emitted a bubbling hiss.

The berserker's grin ticked at Kurogane's face again, despite himself, as he faced it. The revulsion, the hatred, the rage all mingled into one and he savored it, letting the heat build and build in him, flowing like smooth honey in his veins. "You want blood?" he snarled, voice rumbling with the long-building fury. "It's blood you want? Well, I'm right here, come on -- eat me, just try -- "

It reared back, raising its head on the too-thin, too-flexible neck; a bulge worked in that throat like some parody of a man's adams apple, before the skin suddenly split open and a mouth opened, spewing forth a cloud of squirming black figures.

It was the moment Kurogane had been waiting for, and his rictus grin stretched wider, even as the swarm poured over him. Countless limbs and fangs battered at him, striking at his armor, seeking an opening to get at him, but it was too late, the monster had made a fatal mistake -- because Kurogane still had seconds left to strike, and while the host was issuing this final attack, it could neither move nor defend.

 _You thought you could eat me, like you ate the others,_ he thought, seething, murderous rage, _but it's YOU who are MY prey --_ he moved, releasing all his pent-up _ki_ in a single sweeping blow, as the voice roared out of him -- _"Hama ryu-ou-jin!"_

Fire flashed out along the length of Souhi, flared out in a wide sweeping path around and ahead of him. The wave of fire blasted out ahead of the sword's path, vermin withering and dropping in its wake, and overtook the host in fire and steel. It shrieked once more, an almost-human sounding scream of agony and hatred, before the misshapen head and neck exploded apart.

The first thing Kurogane did, once he was sure that neither of the two oni were going to move again, was to wipe the corrosive blood off of his armor and sword with a combination of mud and his already much-abused cloak. Kurogane took a long breath, watching the vermin flopping and writhing on the ground around him; they were harmless once the host was dead, although it might take them hours yet to stop moving. He walked slowly over to the still-twitching hulk of the big one, braced his foot against the back of its skull, and retrieved his father's sword with a grunt of effort.

 _Two more down,_ he thought with satisfaction. _That's the last of this pack, I think. That should buy us some peace and quiet, at least for a little while..._

His concentration was suddenly broken by the sound of clapping. He spun around, nearly losing his footing for the first time since the fight began, and gaped dumbfounded to see the flash of light blond and bright blue. Somehow, without his noticing, the wizard had followed him up the dry gully and was seated on a fallen log with his back to the ravine. Fai was applauding, expression alight, as though he were watching a talent show at a local matsuri.

"Oh, very good, Kuro-chan!" Fai avowed, clasping his hands together. "You were amazing!"

It took a long moment for Kurogane to come down out of his battle-haze, but through the shock he finally found his voice. "What the _hell_ are you doing up here?" he sputtered. "I left you back down at the shrine! Were you trying to get your idiot self killed?!"

"Now, now, I was perfectly safe," Fai said and grinned. "And I just couldn't possibly miss out on the chance to see Kuro-tan in action, could I?"

 _"Safe?"_ Kurogane roared. "If either of those oni had seen you, you'd have been easy meat! To say nothing of the vermin --"

"Oh, I wasn't worried," Fai said in a sing-song voice. "Only one of them got past you. They didn't seem to want to come past the barrier here." A wave of his hand described an arc on the ground in front of him.

Kurogane took a deep breath, opening his mouth to ream the other man out, but then abruptly closed it. The boundary of the influence of the _jinja_ was more or less congruous with the rim of the ravine, but there was no way this stranger should have known that. And Fai had spoken of it as observed fact, not conjecture. "If you'd stayed where you were put, there wouldn't have been any."

"But I thought you might need some backup."

"I don't need _any_ backup, and if I did I wouldn't need _you._ "

Fai just smiled, putting his chin in his hands. "Maybe you needed my backup and you didn't even know it," he suggested brightly.

Kurogane stopped for a moment, flummoxed by that comment; a quick mental review of the fight shed no light on it. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously, as the moment's pause to think brought the other comment home to him. "What do you mean, only one got past me?" he growled, obscurely offended at the implication that he had let _anything_ slip past his guard.

"Oh, it was bolder than the others," Fai shrugged, head still in his hands, and glanced over to one side. "It was a good thing you gave me that dagger after all, wasn't it?" Kurogane saw a glimpse of metal, and with an askance look at the wizard, headed over to it.

It was the war knife, stuck in a tree where Fai must have thrown it; stuck like a beetle on a pin was one of the vermin, now very dead. Kurogane did a double take. "I gave you one weapon to protect yourself and you _threw it away?"_ He glared outrage back in the other man's directions. "Wizard, if you were born yesterday, then how in hell did you survive until today?!"

"Just lucky, I guess," Fai said sunnily. Kurogane scowled, and reached out to take his weapon back. He hesitated a moment, however, as his hand tested the give of the knife. The point of the blade had pierced the loathsome creature straight through the center and entered the wood straight on, and driven in for several inches.

It was actually a pretty good throw, for a man as useless in a fight as the wizard. No -- Kurogane corrected himself. It was an good throw for a man who could barely stand, let alone walk in a straight line, and who could only see out of one eye, and that eye not very well. Despite himself, his eyebrows rose slightly; he was impressed.

"Kuro-chan looked so manly, fighting those demons!" the wizard chirped from behind him, and Kurogane tensed and schooled his expression once more, yanking the knife out of the wood. Not that he would ever, _ever_ admit to being impressed, of course. "He has _all_ sorts of hidden talents that you would never expect."

"You've known me for less than a day," Kurogane pointed out, walking back over to the smaller of the corpses. He nudged at the end of one half-severed leg with a booted foot, then crouched down and began to saw off one of the misshapen claws. "How the hell do you know what talents I do and don't have?"

"Well, for one thing," and there was a subtle change of Fai's tone, enough to make Kurogane still warily and look his way, "I didn't know you were a mage, too."

That won a disparaging snort and a withering glare. "I'm not. Don't be a moron." He turned back to his task.

"No?" Fai tilted his head to one side, smiling brightly. "I'm pretty sure I saw you attack with fire, towards the end."

Kurogane extracted one of the claws and stood, tossing it in his hand for a moment before he tucked it under the edge of the leather strap crossing his hip. It wasn't the carrying place he'd prefer -- he could still smell its charnel stink -- but he only had to carry it until he got back to his horse. As disgusting as it was, a demon hunter had to turn in proof of his spoils, or he wouldn't get paid. "That wasn't magic, that was swordsmanship."

"Kuro-chan," Fai said, amused and admonishing, "I know an awful lot of swordsmen, and none of them can shoot fire out of the end of their swords."

Kurogane glared at him, then snorted again and turned away, moving to the second of the corpses. "Then they aren't as good at it as I am."

He overrode Fai's next sally with a stern, "Drop it, wizard. Don't try to talk about something you know nothing about. I know swordplay, and I'm telling you that what I do isn't magic. I've trained all my life in the use of the sword, and I've never once been interested in any kind of magic. Do I _look_ like a woman?"

He'd actually managed to stump the wizard with that one, he saw with some satisfaction as he turned; Fai sat with his mouth hung open, stopped in the middle of whatever inane reply he was going to make. After a moment he blinked, and cleared his throat, and gave a little shrug. "Well, Kuro-chan knows best, I suppose," he said, in a casual tone.

"Damn right I do," Kurogane asserted, and turned back to the demon hulk. There had to be something easily detachable on this thing that he could carry back as a token.

\------

Six hours later, Kurogane found himself wondering how he'd gotten himself into this.

There was always a feeling of letdown after a kill, he knew that. Not that the oni made good company, but in the release of tension after the stalk and the kill it was a lot easier to hear the quiet that came with no living humans within miles. That must have been why, Kurogane decided. Temporary insanity, adrenaline crash.

They'd slithered back down the gully to Kurogane's camp; the wizard lost his footing badly once along the way, his foot turning under him and leading to a painful scraping slide down several yards of sheer gravel. After a moment's screeching impulse to grab him and save him from a nasty fall, Kurogane had restrained himself, and decided that it was probably good for him. He'd been _told_ to stay in the ravine, after all.

Once they'd gotten back to the camp, he'd set about breaking camp and packing everything back onto the horse, while the mage sat and watched him curiously. "What now?" he asked with great interest. "More demons to kill?"

"Not within a hundred miles of here, for sure," Kurogane said firmly. "Those two made seven, and that's all the tracks I counted."

"Where are you going next, then?"

Kurogane frowned as he tightened the strap on the heavy, double-leather sack containing his grisly trophies. Didn't want those to fall off the horse, even if he didn't want to carry them on his person. "I was going north along the wall when I picked up their trail; I suppose I should turn back to report these."

"And what about me?"

"Hell if I know," Kurogane growled, tightening the girth with a jerk. The horse blew a breath of protest at him. "Go wherever you like." The problem of what to do with the wizard -- turn him in, leave him, let him go? -- still had offered no clear solution.

But that had been a mistake, because the wizard's clear blue eye had welled up with alligator tears. "Kuro-chan is _so_ cruel -- here I am in the middle of a strange country and he wants to leave me here to starve to death and be eaten by demons and die -- I knew that you were mean, but I never could have imagined you could be so heartless --"

Kurogane had never heard a grown man _whine_ before, and he'd been willing to do pretty much anything to make him shut up. "All right! All right, you can come with me. At least to the border!" he added the contingent, if only to make him feel like he was the one in charge here.

That had stopped the fake tears in an instant, and Fai was back to his normal sunny smile. "Yay! Thank you, Kuro-chan!"

With some ill grace, he'd allowed Fai to ride double on the horse behind him, even allowing his unexpected passenger to hang on to him to keep to his precarious perch. After all, he figured, if swarms of vermin and oni claws couldn't reach him through his armor, one weakened wizard wasn't likely to succeed where they'd failed.

But he'd miscalculated somehow, he was beginning to increasingly think. His armor, worn so comfortably now as to be a second skin, was a hard, cold shell. But hours of the man pressing against his back to stay on was pooling an accumulated warmth against his back, creeping in through his clothes and skin despite him. And while he couldn't feel Fai's hands, clinging determinedly to the edges of the armor plates, he couldn't ignore the subtle pressure pulling him back into that warmth. It wasn't precisely uncomfortable, not in the way Kurogane was used to thinking of the term, but it was unfamiliar and pervasive enough to put him on edge, and he kept fighting against a flustered blush as they rose.

Fai rode behind him in silence; Kurogane had determinedly ignored his chatter until he had wound down, either discouraged or just exhausted. At first Kurogane had enjoyed the peace and quiet. But an itching feeling was beginning to build in his bones, almost like a buzzing in his armor. Was that damn wizard doing something weird? His horse snorted uneasily, although Kurogane couldn't be sure whether he was feeling it too, or if Kurogane's own tension was transmitting to the horse.

Eventually the annoyance won out. "Whatever you're doing, stop," he said, breaking his own self-imposed gag rule.

The buzzing feeling abruptly stopped, which only reinforced Kurogane's conviction that he'd been up to something. "Oh, could you hear it too?" Fai said with some surprise -- and a tinge of satisfaction.

No doubt he was about to get started on Kurogane's supposed magic abilities again. "I didn't hear _anything._ That's the problem. You're being too damn quiet back there," Kurogane said truthfully. Then, after a pause, "What _were_ you doing?"

"Oh... calling," Fai said, vaguely.

"Calling what?" he asked. He didn't care, he _really_ didn't, but the evasiveness of the answer made him want to pin it down anyway.

"Whatever answers," Fai said even less informatively, but then changed the subject. "Kuro-sama says he isn't a mage."

"Because I'm not," Kurogane retorted.

Fai ignored his interruption, and continued in a slow and thoughtful tone, "But if he isn't one, he must know someone who is. Someone who cares about him very much."

"How do you figure that?" Kurogane said, somewhat unnerved.

"Mm, because he has spells on him. One here --" Fai released his grip on Kurogane's shoulder, and brought his hand down to hover over the sheathed hilt of Souhi. Thankfully for his own health, he made no attempt to touch her. " -- one here --" and his hand moved up along Kurogane's side and down his arm to touch the back of his hand, easily holding the reins. He couldn't feel that touch, through the gauntlet, but it raised the hairs on the back of his neck anyway. The silver ring he always wore under his armor seemed suddenly, almost itchingly warm.

"And one here." The hand rose once more, reaching up to brush over the front of Kurogane's helmet. "Spells of protections... blessings," Fai mused. Kurogane decided that the safest course was to refrain from comment, and hope the wizard took the cue as well. He was _not_ about to tell this spying Ceres wizard anything about Tsukuyomi.

That lasted for all of five minutes. "So, who is it that cares so very much about Kuro-chan to give them to him?" Fai's voice was suddenly mischievous, and much too close to Kurogane's ear: "Is it his _sweetheart?"_

Kurogane was a years experienced rider, but despite all his training his horse balked and snorted as his hands jerked convulsively on the reins. It would have served the wizard right if he fell off, but unfortunately he had a grip like a monkey. "What the hell? No!"

"No? No sweetheart yet? How very unusual," Fai laughed. "I guess the girls of Nihon are not very lucky. Or maybe they all have very poor taste."

"None of your damn business!" Kurogane growled, although despite himself he could feel his face heating up, and was just glad that the stupid nosy wizard couldn't see.

"Not a sweetheart, then." Fai said, amused, although the manic humor faded from his voice slightly. "Then perhaps -- are _all_ the magic users in Nihon women?"

"Of course," Kurogane answered the perfectly obvious fact. _Of course._ The man's role was to go out and do battle, and the woman's duty was to defend and protect the home, drawing on magic to bolster her defenses. Mixing up those two roles was somehow just... weird.

"Then perhaps... a sister, waiting eagerly for your safe return?" Fai guessed. Kurogane snorted, and shook his head. "And your mother..."

"No," Kurogane said shortly, unencouragingly. He stared forward unseeingly, letting the horse pick his own trail through the overgrown ruins. They were almost to the outer edge of those ruins, now -- some of the rubble from the fallen wall had landed even here.

"How about a grandmother then?" Fai kept on pestering him. "Oh! I know. A kindly aunt? A cousin?"

Kurogane ground his teeth together. "I have no family waiting," he snarled.

"Oh, Kuro-pon, that's just too sad! You mean you're estranged from _all_ your family? Do they not approve of what you do for a living?"

"No!" Kurogane roared, stung into an unexpected honesty despite himself. "My mother was a _miko_. She maintained the wards of Suwa, kept the darkness at bay." Once he'd started talking about them, it was easier to go on. "And my father -- my father was their strongest warrior. He taught me all I knew -- there was no one better, or stronger." He didn't add _They're both dead now_ although the phrase rang in his head like a bell. It was obvious.

Fai digested this for a moment, but even Kurogane couldn't have predicted the next question to come out of his mouth. "Did you _love_ your parents, then?"

"What the hell kind of a question is that? Of course I did!" His first urge, to punch Fai in the face or at least throw him off the back of the horse, was held in check largely by the disbelieving conviction that he must have heard wrong, surely nobody would just come out and _ask_ something like that -- but also by the entirely sincere puzzlement in Fai's tone, as though the very concept of loving your parents was baffling to him. He actually reined the horse to a stop, just so he could stand in the stirrups and twist around to stare at Fai in astonishment. "Are you saying _you_ don't?"

"How very interesting," Fai said, but vaguely, as though he weren't really attending. His head was turned to the side, staring hard off into the woods south of them. It occurred to Kurogane that Fai almost _never_ answered the same questions as he asked, and that realization annoyed the hell out of him.

"Oh -- we've stopped. Good." Abruptly, the wizard braced himself on Kurogane's shoulder, swung one leg over the saddlebow, and slid down the side of the horse. "Good timing, Kuro-chan! She's almost here."

" 'She' who?" Kurogane demanded suspiciously, looking from Fai to the woods and back again. He opened his senses, but detected no hint of demonic taint within months of here, and no human presences within a mile. "Some friend of yours?"

"Oh, I hope so," Fai said. He settled on the ground, but after a few moments of trying to stand, winced and grabbed onto the stirrup for support. "You don't mind waiting just a few minutes, do you?"

Sure enough, within a few minutes, hoofbeats sounded from the copse of woods -- unshod hoofbeats, from what Kurogane could tell. A few moments later the horse itself came into sight; a dappled gray mare, unsaddled, unbridled, and with no rider in sight. She trotted up to to Fai, shied her head and sidling around Kurogane and his horse, and whickered in greeting, pushing her nose against Fai's outstretched hand. Fai smiled, a smile oddly gentler than his normal smirk.

"Is she _your_ horse?" Kurogane demanded. But there had been no sign of mounts, or their corpses, when he'd found him. "Your party didn't have any horses with you!"

"Of course not," Fai answered, patting the strange mare gently on the head, on the neck. "Too conspicuous, too much gear. Too hard to hide. We came on foot."

"Then where did she come from?"

"Oh, she's from around here originally -- she ran wild after her people died, but she stayed close, for memory of them. Didn't you, lady?" he addressed the horse, who huffed at him.

Kurogane was beginning to hate magic, at least the way the wizard did it. "So you can talk to horses, too?"

"Anyone can talk to horses. The question is only if you can listen to them, too. And anyway," Fai addressed Kurogane directly, "you said yourself that the demons only ate human blood. I thought there must still be some beasts around, to answer my call."

"That's what you were doing, before? You were calling for a _horse?_ " Kurogane demanded incredulously.

"A horse, or any other living thing that could carry me. I'm glad I got a horse and not a bear, though. A bear could have been awkward." Fai released Kurogane's stirrup at last, and with some awkward scrambling and pulling managed to get himself astride his new mount; fortunately the mare was not as tall as his horse. He steadied himself quickly even without the presence of a saddle or reins --Kurogane's practiced eye summed up the skill it took to do so, clearly Fai was a much better rider than he had thought -- and smiled cheerfully across at Kurogane. "Well, I guess this is where we say goodbye, Kuro-pyon!"

"What?" Kurogane demanded.

"Goodbye. Farewell. It's a usual custom for people, when they are parting ways." Fai turned to study him. "You have to continue your patrol, and I need to get home. You said you were only taking me to the border, right?"

"Are you insane? It's four days ride through the wilderness back to the northern border!" Kurogane exclaimed. "There could be any number of oni in the way!"

"I'll try to avoid them," Fai said, and smiled at him. "Now that I've learned to do so, and all thanks to you."

"All you've got are the clothes on your back," Kurogane objected, beginning to wonder why he was even doing so. Hadn't he been trying to figure out what to do with the man aside from taking him back to a Nihon prison? But this was just ridiculous. "You have no weapons, or food --"

"Oh, that won't be a problem!" Fai beamed brightly at him, and Kurogane responded with a suspicious glare. Did he mean that he expected to catch his own food, or what? Somehow Kurogane had trouble seeing the flighty man as being that woodsworthy. "It's only four days, after all."

"Yes, but --"

"Is there some reason Kuro-pon doesn't want me to go?" Fai tilted his head to the side slightly, still smiling. "Or perhaps he means that I am supposed to be a prisoner? You should say something, if that's the case."

"No!" Kurogane growled. "No! That's not what I -- Fine. You go, ride off into the woods and get eaten by oni if you want, fall off your horse and break your neck. It's got nothing to do with me."

Fai laughed. " _Thank_ you, Kuro-pon." The mare turned herself, at no signal from Fai apparent to him, and Fai threaded his fingers lightly through her shaggy mane. "For yesterday and last night, too."

Kurogane just grunted, too off-balance and annoyed to respond in kind, and held his horse back as Fai started off; the gelding was regarding the other horse with interest, and seemed to want to follow her. "Wait," he called, before the other man quite got out of earshot.

Fai stopped, again without any apparent signal to his mount, and looked over his shoulder inquiringly. "Yes?" he said.

Kurogane nudged his horse up until he was level with Fai. "Here. At the very least take this." He pulled out the tantou, back in its sheath, and reached it across the distance between them. "It makes my stomach hurt just thinking about someone riding around out there without at least _some_ weapon, all right?"

Fai looked surprised, and touched. Before he could say something, Kurogane kicked his mount into motion, turning away and towards the south, and feeling somewhat better for having gotten the last word.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Incidentally, Kurogane's horse is named Futsunomitama, after the legendary sword, but since he doesn't get particularly sentimental about his horses and doesn't use names that often in the first place, it never comes up in the text.


	4. Kurogane Demon-Queller

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kurogane Demon-Queller reports to his superiors, and his loyalty is brought into question.

Edo had its own walls, of course, and its own wards, for all that it was miles to the nearest border and miles more out of the way to the nearest gateway to the outside world. Kurogane eyed the walls with mixed feelings as he approached; on one hand, it struck him as massively redundant, a waste of resources and energy that could be better spent elsewhere. On the other hand, if ever an enemy army -- or oni invasion -- _did_ breach the outer walls and drive all the way to the heart of the realm, this would be the place for any last stand.

Not that Kurogane was likely to see it. His duties kept him far away from the capital, usually; most likely in the event of some catastrophic invasion, he'd die out there on the front lines before the fight ever came this far. He sighed, and shook his head. His thoughts were getting positively morbid.

He touched his horse's flank, urging a little more speed out of the wearied beast; not that they could go all that fast on this crowded, traffic-choked street, but pedestrians spilled out of his way as he approached. He'd been this way many times before, but people still gaped at him as he passed; mounted tall on a black warhorse that few could afford to maintain, dressed head to toe in heavy black armor, and with the hilts of the two swords his rank entitled him clearly visible, a promise of explosive violence and threat.

One side of Kurogane's lip curled as a mother snatched her child off the street, dragging her under an overhanging awning, but he otherwise ignored it. These people had heard only snatches of rumors about him and his duty; they had no idea what exactly he did, what he faced, so far outside of the borders of their safe little city. And as long as he kept to his duty, they never would... and so he decided to take their half-fearful fascination as his due respect, rather than as insult.

Being back in the city was simultaneously soothing and nerve-wracking at once; a relief to be back among people again, and yet... the crowding, the bodies pressed close from all sides, set off his battle alarms and put all his teeth on edge. It didn't help to remind himself that he was unlikely to encounter enemies _here;_ it was the knowledge that if he _did,_ it would be almost impossible to fight in this crowd that grated. And... the people themselves. Talking, laughing, shouting... a cacophony of living noise poured into his sensitive ears. He set himself to endure.

The crowd was thickest around the gate itself, wagons and foot travelers waiting in a queue for their chance to be inspected and passed through. Kurogane shouldered his horse impatiently between them, and none dared to bar his path, until he reached the portcullis itself, and halted on the challenge from the posted guard.

One of them stepped forward, and saluted, his leather-and-chainmail clinking. "Lord Kurogane. You've returned?"

Kurogane relaxed slightly; at least this pair of guards recognized him on sight, and he wasn't going to have to waste time on any _stupid_ arguments about not carrying passes today. "Obviously."

The guard nodded. "We received word from the Red Sundown gate two days ago that you had entered the gates. We've been expecting you. And, um..." His gaze flickered behind Kurogane, searching for other horses, other riders, and his expression showed dismay when he saw none. "Only you?"

"As you see." Kurogane let his voice go flat, grating. He had a lot to discuss with Amaterasu, on that subject. But not with a gate guard.

The guard's mouth opened as if to ask a further question, but then, intelligently, closed. He stood back, and waved Kurogane under the wrought iron portcullis into the city proper.

Inside the inner gates, the streets were wider, cleaner, and emptier; only the city's noble clans, and the inhabitants and servants of the palace itself, were permitted to dwell here. As a semi-member of both categories, Kurogane had his own residence here, although he was rarely present for more than a few days at a time.

His horse needed little urging, now; on the familiar streets of the palace city, it knew that home, and stables and bedding and food, were close at hand, and it clopped willingly down the cobbled streets with all the enthusiasm Kurogane himself could hardly muster. It was hard to say which he wanted more at this point; real food, a real bed, or a _bath._ Hard living in the wilderness for weeks on end without access to bath water -- interspersed by furious battles that tended to coat him with demonic filth -- had accustomed Kurogane to putting up with dirt, but that didn't mean he had to like it.

He arrived, finally, in the courtyard of his own house; dismounted with a tired grunt and a clatter. " _Tadaima_ ," he called out, but received no response -- his student must be elsewhere today.

Kurogane controlled a faint irritation. He was absent for weeks at a time, and it was never entirely certain when he'd be back, so it was unreasonable to expect the boy to be there just when Kurogane returned. Still, this meant that he was going to have to stable and care for his horse himself, before he could look after his own needs. He sighed resignation, and turned left, into the stable block.

When he finally emerged into the house proper, lugging his gear over one shoulder, he received an unpleasant shock -- he was _not_ alone in the house after all. A man in the formal, dark garb of the high Court, modified into daily wear for those whose business actually took them outside of the castle, was waiting for him in the main room of his house. After a moment, Kurogane identified the man as Lantis, one of the Imperial Household's personal message boys. Kurogane felt a stab of foreboding, before the man even spoke. "Well?" he growled, by way of opening the conversation. "What are you doing in my house?"

The messenger ignored the challenge, and instead gave him a smooth, courtly bow. "Lord Kurogane of Suwa. News of your return has traveled swiftly to the central court, and Her Sacred Highness Tsukiyomi bid me convey her gladness to hear of your safety."

"And?" Kurogane said, impatience growing in the face of these meaningless pleasantries. "She didn't have to send a messenger to tell me that."

"And," the man continued impassively, "her sister, Her Royal Majesty the Divine Amaterasu, Empress of the holy land of Nihon and all surrounding territories, requests and requires you to appear at Shirasagi Castle at the first available moment upon your return."

He recognized that phrasing, and minor irritation flared into major irritation. 'First available moment' from one of these messengers inevitably meant _right now._ "What does Amaterasu have to say to me that is so bloody important that it can't wait an hour?" he growled.

Another smooth bow, and this time Kurogane could detect the faint mockery hidden in the gesture of respect. "Her Majesty does not confide her reasons to one such as myself. She merely bid you come, and sent me as an escort and guide."

As if he needed a guide. The flunky had merely been sent to ensure that he come up to the palace _right now,_ without food or a bath _or_ a chance to change clothes. Kurogane opened his hand and let the heavy packs fall to the bamboo floor with a shattering crash, but the messenger didn't bat an eye, and Kurogane tried with some difficulty to calm himself.

The inconvenience and attendant insult was doubtless deliberate, intended to put him off balance and weaken his self control. Well, he'd put up with worse than Amaterasu on a bad day; and at least this court summons would give him a chance to report to Princess Tomoyo sooner rather than later. "Well, what are you waiting for?" he snapped, when he had managed to tamp most of the snarl out of his voice. "Lead the way."

\------------------

Kurogane and his guide climbed the hill leading up to the castle on foot; no horses were permitted on the castle grounds itself except those ridden by the royal family. Despite his bad mood, a part of Kurogane's heart eased as the castle itself came into view. The sheer stone walls that rose gracefully out of the moat; topped by the many-tiered castle buildings, the black crenelated roofs. He'd spent a year here, training, and while many things about that period had been painful, the castle itself was still a beacon of security and peace.

They passed between the flame-arched doorways and across the moat, but to Kurogane's surprise, instead of going straight in to the main receiving chamber they turned left across the open grounds. Another series of small bridges crossed the small creeks dividing the grounds, and in the distance Kurogane caught a glimpse of the gazebo that sheltered the sacred tree.

Another right turn, and Kurogane finally recognized where they were going; an outdoors pavilion was set up and waiting, with a wide expanse of white sands bordered on one side by a wooden walkway. The court was receiving here, today, it seemed; for the yard was surrounded on three sides by men and women in the outfits of the Imperial Guard, and more people in full court dress waited in the shade of the overhang.

Kurogane growled under his breath; sitting under the sun in his full armor for however long this took was going to be a bitch, and he was sure Amaterasu knew it. Gritting his teeth, he handed his swords to the corporal in charged, and stepped out onto the white sands, crossing to the center where he knelt, properly, and bowed, touching his forehead for a long moment to the white sand before he straightened up.

He glanced first to the left, where Princess Tomoyo sat enthroned in her long robes, surrounded by her personal guard as usual. He still recognized most of their faces, although there were a few new ones he couldn't put names to; he made a mental note to find out who the new additions were, and make sure their training had been up to snuff. Tomoyo gave him a brief smile, but it faded quickly; she looked... solemn.

On the other wing of the pavilion sat the crown heir, Amaterasu's younger half-brother Touya. By tradition, the male heir to the throne was the de facto leader of any offensive foreign military action, but in this generation that role had been somewhat usurped by his older sister. As per usual, he lounged at her left hand looking rather bored, but at least his gaze on Kurogane held no particular animosity.

The prince was surrounded by servants of his own, including Rondart, the court recorder; the presence of the scribe indicated a level of formality to this audience that Kurogane wasn't quite sure how to interpret. The man glanced up at Kurogane once, the light flashing off of his spectacles, then bent back over his paper, pen scratching assiduously.

Amaterasu herself was in the central seat; in her battle dress today, he noted with approval, a much fancier and more gilded version of the armor the palace guards wore, topped with an intricately embroidered black tabard. It was clearly for show, however, as her hair was pulled up in one of the elaborate styles not suitable for any amount of riding or fighting. Her expression was... unamused.

"Your Imperial Highness, Divine Amaterasu," he greeted her with the usual formalities, and then decided to get right to the point. "What do you want?"

Touya winced. Amaterasu regarded him with grave, dark eyes, and responded in a cool voice, "So, Kurogane Demon-Queller. You have returned from another successful hunt."

He did not bother to confirm the blindingly obvious. "I gave my tokens to your majordomo," he said instead. He really would prefer not to have to carry the damn things around, but a man had to eat.

"Alone," Amaterasu said.

Oh, Gods, was _that_ what this was about? Kurogane's irritation flared into simmering anger, partly with her, partly with himself, even now. "Yes."

"As we recall, you left Edo seven weeks ago with an escort of five _ashigaru_."

He couldn't even remember their names, now. He hardly ever bothered to remember the names of footsoldiers, because he didn't want to get too attached; a precaution that proved justified depressingly more often than not. "I told you not to send them with me. I told you I work alone. I told you they were bloody amateurs and would just get in my way. You should have listened to me then."

"Our stated intentions," Amaterasu said icily, "was that they would accompany you on your hunts, to learn the art of demon-slaying from an expert. With the idea that they would swell our ranks of demon-hunters as well, in time."

"Grooming my replacement already?" Kurogane inquired through his teeth. "I hadn't realized you had planned to retire me so soon."

"You would be far more valuable if you were less intractable," Amaterasu snapped. "Nevertheless, as you well know, we are always in need of more skilled warriors... the more so as war approaches in the north."

His head came up; he glared directly at his monarch. "I've already told you a hundred times," he snarled, "I won't get involved in wars between humans. That's not my job; my duty is to hunt and kill the abominations. You have thousands of ordinary soldiers who can fight your wars for you."

He glared; she glared back. It was Touya who broke the deadlock, clearing his throat and sitting up from his casual lounge. "It's always been enough in the past, it's true," he said. "But things are different now, especially if some of the rumors we've been hearing about Ceres using wizards on the battlefield, are true."

"And that brings us back to you," Amaterasu said coolly. "To your last mission, to your... encounters."

Kurogane sat very still, suddenly aware of the heat of the sun on his back, the sweat trickling down his sides under the armor. Fucking _hell!_ How had she found out about that? There'd been no one to see them within miles! How did she always find out about things? He could not help but glance over to Tomoyo, who was regarding him with sad, solemn eyes. He cleared his throat. "What about my last mission?" he said, trying not to give too much away in his voice.

"You found a Ceres wizard outside the wards," Amaterasu said angrily, "engaged in what could only have been espionage activities, and not only did you not kill him, you _helped_ him, and then _let him go!"_

"When I left Nihon seven weeks ago," Kurogane said, taking refuge in strict, controlled formality, "we were not at war with Ceres, to my knowledge. I had received no orders concerning the treatment and disposition of Ceres wizards, especially not ones _outside_ of Nihon's jurisdiction."

Amaterasu said freezingly, "The rule of Nihon does not end at the wards. All the lands for a hundred miles around are ours to control."

Kurogane shrugged, under the bulky armoring. "A legal fiction, and you know it -- who is your reach beyond those walls? Whatever patrols venture beyond them during daylight hours, and us. The demon hunters. We've always been expected to exercise our judgment."

"It is not your _judgment_ that is in doubt now, Lord of Suwa," Amaterasu's voice had gone dangerous, and she leaned forward in her chair, poised as if to strike. "On the eve of war, we cannot afford disloyalty or treason in any of our people, least of all our most powerful soldiers."

And that was just too much, the insults and the blazing heat beating on his armor and days' worth of riding fatigue, too much after all the blood he'd laid down for his country -- his own and others, as well, the others he couldn't forget. She'd as much as accused him of killing those useless soldiers she'd loaded him with, in order to protect his position -- and yes he blamed himself, for not being able to save them, but he'd _tried._

Images boiled up in his head of the night ambush, the screaming melee -- two of the soldiers died in the first moment of combat, as he tried with all his strength to drive the oni back, clear some space for them. The vermin had come in a shrieking swarm and Souhi had cleared a path of flame, but it wasn't enough -- the soldiers had been wearing chain mail and leather, no better than cheesecloth against their hungry mouths.

He'd heard the scream as he turned around, to see the youngest of the soldiers clawing at his own arm, the white of bone showing through as they devoured their way upwards through the flesh towards his heart... the glint of steel and flame as he brought the sword around, amputating the ravaged limb so that the rest might be saved; but it had been too late already, too late by then, and the boy had died in his arms, of shock and blood loss. Kurogane couldn't even remember what his face had looked like.

It was Amaterasu who'd sent the boy out to die, Amaterasu who'd fed them into the very horrors that Kurogane spent blood and bone to fight -- and now she was accusing _him_ of treason? He brought his head up again, and whatever look was on his face made the guards surrounding the courtyard shuffle nervously and put a hand to their weapons.

"I have never," he breathed, just one hair's edge away from a blood fury, "been disloyal to Nihon. You think -- that I would betray my own country? You think I would betray my own family?"

A movement, to the side; he blinked the haze from his vision in time to see Tomoyo stand from her place, her eyes on her sister; she caught Amaterasu's gaze, and shook her head, just once. Amaterasu frowned, but then gave a grudging nod, and they both settled back to their original positions. "Very well," she said, slightly ungraciously, Kurogane thought. "We accept your assurances. Moving on. What can you tell us about the wizard of Ceres? What are his fighting strengths? What abilities did you see him display?"

They had switched from an interrogation to a debriefing session, and Kurogane groped for balance on the rough ground, easing away from the almost battle-stance. He thought it over. "About the only thing I saw him do in the eighteen hours I spent in his company was talk to horses. If that's what Ceres has to throw against us in battle, I don't think we have too much to worry about."

That answer didn't seem to much please the court; but if they didn't want to know, they shouldn't have asked. Kurogane settled back against his heels, sweating under the hot sun, and prepared to make all their lives at least as difficult as his was right now.

\---------------------

He got his chance to vent later, out of the sun, once the court session had broken up and the three royal siblings had retired to different chambers inside the castle. Finally, finally he was permitted to go and see Tomoyo, and make his real report.

Reporting quickly turned into ranting, pacing round and round the elegantly-furnished chamber while Tomoyo waited him out with a small, patient smile. Souma stood behind her, half-faded into the background, but she was a demon-hunter like himself and Kurogane had no worries about her.

"Why doesn't she understand?" Kurogane raged, making another circuit around the room's low table. "The oni are a greater threat to our country than any human army could be. They won't stop, they don't give up, they can't understand surrender or treaties or truces. We need to spend every minute of our day out there, hunting them down, before their numbers grow too great for us to handle. We don't have time to play politics or conquistadors in other countries. There aren't enough of us to spare!"

"That's why she's so intent on training new hunters," Souma suggested quietly, from the wall.

"Yes, and that --!" He spun around to face her, slamming his fist into his open palm in frustration. "If that's what she really wants, then give them to me in the city, give them to me to train! I didn't learn to fight them in a day, and neither did you -- it took years of training, and in a battle like this one there is no margin for error! If you make one mistake, you're dead, and worse than dead. Sending greenies out on the battlefield like this with no preparation is no better than murder--"

"You know why she doesn't assign you students," Souma said wearily. "You don't spend enough time in the city to train anyone for the length of time you're suggesting. None of us do. Because, as you say, we're needed outside the walls, every minute that we can spare."

"And that's exactly why this idea of pulling us off patrols and sending us to fight in the army is moronic!" Kurogane forged on to the next sticking point. "So what if there's war in the north? There's always been war on some border! She's only interested in martial glory -- her own mooks aren't good enough so she wants to, to poach us from you so that she can use us like attack dogs on her enemies --"

Tomoyo raised a hand, and Kurogane cut himself off, taking a few deep breaths to try and contain his fury. He was going dangerously close to the edge, he knew. Apologetically, he stepped forward and knelt down in front of his princess; even with her sitting on the raised dais, this still only brought his eyes level with hers. She smiled at him and extended her hands, and he exhaled heavily and took them in his own. His hands always felt so clumsy, so rough compared to hers, soft and tiny and perfect.

" _My dear Kurogane_ ," her voice washed over him, sweet and silvery as always, full of fondness. " _So determined to make the world right, to make it what you think it should be. Your dedication has always been admirable. In that way, really, you and my older sister are not that different._ "

Kurogane bared his teeth. He wasn't sure that was a compliment. Tomoyo smiled, but it quickly faded. " _I know that you have only the best intentions. But there is more going on here than you know._ "

He paused, suddenly uncertain. "What do you mean?"

" _My sister has to think of the good of the whole empire, not merely the facet that is our charge,_ " Tomoyo went on. " _She makes her decisions and chooses her priorities as best as she can. And although I am the Tsukuyomi, who presides over our spiritual defenses, our ultimate goal is the same; the safety and welfare of all of Nihon_."

"I know," Kurogane grumbled, subdued now. "Of course that's mine, as well. But --" Her hands tightened slightly on his, and he cut off his objection midsentence.

" _It is true, that Nihon has fought victoriously in many wars for years without requiring the aid of the elite hunters. But the war that approaches us now is not like any that Nihon has faced before. It is no mere border conflict. It may well be a battle for the very survival of our empire, even the survival of our people._ "

A sudden chill shot through Kurogane. "What? You're not talking about Ceres, are you? They're a fraction of our size, there have been clashes at our borders for years, they --"

" _Are a small country, and one we have long known and never been in fear of, it's true. But something is changing in Ceres, something that blocks even my vision. Their king is ruthless, and cunning, and powerful. More than that, he has spent many years searching for a way to defeat us, and we believe that he may have found such a way -- the wizards of Ceres. He has been seeking them, and gathering them, and grooming them for years for this task, and now they have entered the stage at last._ "

Kurogane opened his mouth to object; the image of the feckless, flighty wizard he'd met flashing his mind. Defeat Nihon? _Him?_ Surely not. Tomoyo caught the thought, and shook her head slightly.

 _"There is much that goes on beyond what your eyes can see, Kurogane. Do not underestimate this man that you met. From what you have described to me, he is very intelligent, and very powerful_." Kurogane snorted disbelief at this, but Tomoyo merely smiled, shaking her head again. " _And he is not the only wizard that Ceres has gathered, in the years leading up to this war. An army of spears and bows, we need not fear. An army of wizards is another matter entirely._ "

Momentarily stricken, Kurogane could find nothing to say. It had never occurred to him -- and it should have -- that Fai was not the only one of his kind. Could there have been other wizards, other scouting parties, sent out from Ceres at the same time? Approaching Nihon, seeking out weaknesses from other directions? And if he had known, he thought helplessly to himself, would he have chosen differently?

" _You should have brought him back to Nihon,_ " Tomoyo thought, and only now was there a note of sad reproach in her voice. " _We would not have harmed him; there is much we could have learned from him. It would have been better if you would stop and think, some times, before you act so carelessly._ "

"I did think," Kurogane objected, nettled. "I wasn't careless. The wizard said no one from his country knew how dangerous the oni were; now he's going to return to his country and spread the word. And they'll listen to him. They'll have to change their plans to deal with them, one way or the other. If this king of Ceres is really as smart as you say he is, maybe he'll give up on the idea of going to war with us; it'd weaken his borders and defenses too much, leave him way too vulnerable to attack. Now he knows the real threat, he'll have to take it into account as well.

"Maybe he'll send his wizards out to fight the oni, if they're as powerful as all that. Best solution all around. Wizards and hunters from both countries fight the real enemy, the Empress gets to go on fighting over the same borderlands with Ceres that we have for hundreds of years, everyone's happy."

Tomoyo blinked, and her eyes widened; her lips parted and she gave a breathy laugh of real delight, gravelly coming from her stunted vocal cords. " _So that was it! I should have guessed that was your plan. Well done, Kurogane. Perhaps you aren't as careless as I thought_." Her smile faded a bit. " _Still so single-minded, though. Always fixated on killing the oni, to the exclusion of everything else._ "

"Someone has to." He raised his head again, met her eyes seriously. "What do you want me to do, Princess? Are you going to pull us from our patrols, send us north, like Amaterasu wants?"

Tomoyo glanced up, her eyes flicking between himself and Souma. A small frown appeared on her face, and she bit her lip. " _No_ ," she said at last. " _No, I don't believe that is necessary... Not yet. There are still many ways that the future could change."_

"And if it does?"

" _Then I will do what I have to in order to protect the existence of this country_ ," she said, her voice and her eyes perfectly level.

Kurogane bowed his head in acceptance, although a part of him roared in protest at the idea. He didn't want to get pulled around by the leash, he didn't want to serve any commander other than Tomoyo, and he didn't want to be put to butchering humans; he especially didn't want to have to hurt the wizard... Hastily, he pulled his hands away from Tomoyo, before she could read too much of that stomach-twisting feeling from him. Although from the slight widening of her eyes as he broke contact, he wasn't sure if he'd moved fast enough.

He stood, somewhat stiffly after kneeling for so long, and kept his voice neutral with an effort. "I'll accept that if it's you, Princess; that way I'll know it really needs to be done."

Interview over; time to leave, go back to his house and eat and have a _bath_ for fuck's sake. He turned to go, avoiding Souma's questioning stare, but before he could move out of reach, Tomoyo caught his hand. "What?" he asked, voice gruff to conceal nervousness.

" _He seems like a fascinating person, this mage,_ " she said, and her 'voice' was mischievous now. " _I would have liked the chance to meet him._ "

He cleared his throat. "He would have been okay with that, I think. He -- actually, he asked me to pass on greetings to you. His regards, that is. For the spells that you did." _For the person who cares so much about you_ , he heard the wizard's voice say again, in his head, and pushed back hard on a threatening blush.

" _Perhaps we will meet at some more propitious time, then_ ," Tomoyo said, the ghost of laughter in her voice; and then she let him go.

  
\----------------

  
Syaoran hurried through the crowded streets, ducking and weaving where he could; he nearly overturned one lady going the other direction with a bucket of tofu, and apologized profusely to her before he wheeled and went on. In the line slowly inching towards the gate he was able to catch his breath, although his foot drummed impatiently on the cobbles. Finally he was able to approach the gate, and showed his tokens to the guard; his city pass, with the Suwa crest painted on it, and his apprentice's badge. It was still strange to him, even after living here for years, when they waved him through and he passed into the imperial city itself. So different from how it used to be, sleeping in alleyways or cheap inn rooms with his father...

He'd regained his second wind by the gate, but trotting up the hill robbed him of it again, and by the time he burst through the courtyard into the main room of his house he was panting again. "I'm back!" he yelled, hopping on one foot to try and get his boots off. "Are you here, Sensei?"

His master was there already, despite his best efforts to beat him home; the tall man had to duck his head under the doorframe leading to the bath. His hair was dripping water onto the towel draped around his neck, and he wore a simple hakama and robe. It was strange how Syaoran could be more nervous of his master dressed so simply in everyday clothes than he was of him dressed in his hunting armor, but most of the training exercises usually took place in street clothes, so that was probably why.

"You're late," Kurogane greeted him flatly. "Where have you been?"

"Down in the city," he explained in a rush, shedding his other boot and stepping up onto the wooden floor. "I heard from Suoh that you'd come back! I didn't know when you planned to come in!"

"Yeah," Kurogane said, and pulled the towel over his head, scrubbing the water off once more. "I had to go up to the palace first."

"Suoh said you'd been called to an audience with the Empress. He said that you were in trouble because while you were out on patrol you met an enemy outside the walls, and you -- it isn't true, is it? That you -- " He was nearly bursting with the urgency to ask the questions crowding in his head, to get some explanation -- but the scowl on Kurogane's face cut him off.

Kurogane muttered something under his breath, threw the towel angrily away from him, and looked up at the ceiling as though imploring the gods for patience. "I just got done reporting to the Empress, and to Princess Tomoyo," he said. "It took four bleeding hours. I'm not about to go over the whole affair with my student in my own home's entryway. I haven't eaten anything since breakfast this morning, and I'm starving. Make yourself useful, will you, and get me some food."

"Oh! Of course. Yes, Sensei." Syaoran subsided, hurrying about his daily chores despite his churning anxiety.

There wasn't much in the kitchens for anything fancy; while Kurogane was away for weeks at a time Syaoran only had to cook for himself. But he managed to get together some miso and some pickled vegetables, some fresh bread and some cheese, and the two of them settled in to dinner, Syaoran nibbling while Kurogane devoured.

"Sorry there's nothing fresh," Syaoran apologized. "I can go to the market tomorrow, to pick up some fresh fruit and meat."

Kurogane nodded, looking slightly distracted. "Get some more oat flour while you're there, and anything else you need to bake. I'll be leaving in four days and I'll want travel food for a month at the least."

Syaoran was crestfallen. "Already? I mean, you're going to leave again so soon?" He'd been hoping that his teacher could stay around for a week at least. "I hoped... That is, I thought maybe we could have some training sessions, you could teach me some new moves."

"Depends on how well you can do the old moves. You been keeping up on your drills?"

"Yes, Sensei!" Syaoran said indignantly. "Every day. I've been practicing with Suoh and Akira!"

"Good. You can show me later. After that, we'll see." Kurogane tipped his head back, draining his bowl of the last of the broth. "But I'm leaving in four days, one way or the other."

Syaoran chewed his lip, already half-knowing the answer, but then forged ahead and asked. "Can I go with you, this time?"

Kurogane started, nearly choked on a bite of bread. "No. Hell, no! Wait four more years, and then ask me. You're not nearly ready."

He knew that was true, knew his teacher was right, but it was still so _frustrating_. Especially having to stay in one place all the time, while Kurogane got to go on patrol, got to _go_ places. It wasn't that he was lonely, exactly, not with his friends in the city... nor even that he didn't like the city itself. And he'd always be grateful to his master for taking him in, giving him a place to stay when he had nowhere else to go. But... he missed traveling, sometimes, felt stifled always staying within the same walls when he longed to see new places, new horizons.

But he'd lost that freedom, years ago, and all thanks to Ceres. Syaoran frowned, gathering up the wooden dishes and the small amount of leftover food. All because of Ceres. It couldn't be true, could it? this rumor that Kurogane had betrayed the Empire, met an enemy outside the walls and given aid to him. Syaoran greatly admired his teacher, and had always deferred to his judgment before, but...

Kurogane watched him for several minutes, chewing thoughtfully, before he spoke again. When he did, he said, "While I was at the palace today, the Empress was talking about pulling the hunters off their patrol and sending them off to the north."

"Take you off patrols? But why?" Syaoran asked, startled.

"To fight against Ceres. Seems they're just that desperate for new troops with more firepower."

"Oh!" Syaoran's mind immediately started turning over this idea. If the army was recruiting... maybe they wouldn't look so askance at younger recruits? Would they let him join, young as he was? He wasn't at his teacher's level of swordsmanship yet, of course, but he'd been training with him for two years now. Surely that would count for something even if he was blind in one eye...

He realized Kurogane had been watching him closely. "Like that idea, do you?" he asked.

"Well..." Syaoran hesitated, flustered. Whether the army would take him or not, he couldn't just leave and join up without permission from his master. "I - I mean, it would give me a chance to do something useful, for a change."

"Useful. Fighting Ceres is useful?"

"Well, of course it is!" Syaoran said hotly. "They're the enemy, aren't they? Nihon's enemy. They're the ones attacking us. We didn't start it. Of course we have to defend ourselves. And besides..."

"And besides," Kurogane finished for him, his eyes narrowed. "You hate Ceres, for what they did to your father, and you want revenge on them."

Syaoran bit his lip, and didn't say anything.

"Kid, I didn't spend two years teaching you the sword so you could use it to indulge your personal grudges."

Syaoran thought that was rather a lot to swallow, especially coming from Kurogane, but he wasn't about to say so. Instead he burst out, "But they're evil! They're barbarians. They attacked us -- we were just traveling through their country, just traveling, and -- they're attacking Nihon, too! How could you," and now the question just popped out of him despite himself, "how could you help one of them? You know what they're like! They do horrible things! How could you help one of the enemy, and save their life, and then let them go?"

Kurogane was silent for a moment, and then answered slowly, as if he were thinking very hard; "They may be Nihon's enemies, but they aren't mine. And besides, you don't know anything about what this one man was like. Everyone from one country isn't the same. He wasn't a soldier; he was just a wizard, and he had nothing to do with what happened to you and your father. Don't blame people for things that have nothing to do with them."

"I -- I guess," Syaoran stammered, but then burst out, "but that isn't right, either. The wizards, the wizards are the worst ones of all. You can't trust them. They're always looking at things you can't see, they could just say anything and how do you know it's the truth? That's what they did to -- my father hadn't done anything wrong, he hadn't done _anything_ at all, but they still arrested him and they _killed_ him because some _wizard_ said he was a spy!"

When the bear-furred guards had come for them, come to arrest Fujitaka, his father had told him to run and he had, lost himself in the streets and the rundown buildings, losing all pursuit, until he'd finally made it across the border, grieving and alone, into Nihon. He'd only found out what happened to his father much later. "They're all liars!"

Kurogane had sat back from the table, his arms folded across his chest. "We've got a problem here, then," he said, as Syaoran stopped for breath. "The problem is, you see, this man when I found him was well outside Nihon's borders, not even within sight of them. He wasn't doing anything, when I met him, that could be considered an act of war. He was in trouble, real immediate deadly danger, when I found him; if I had done nothing, he would have died and worse than died. And I would have had to go on knowing that I effectively had killed him, because I could have helped him, and didn't.

He leaned forward again, his eyes boring intently into Syaoran's. "Now, he could have been doing something with his magic, something that I couldn't see. But I couldn't prove that, one way or the other. So what you would have had me do, was to take a man who was from another country -- who was doing nothing more than traveling through lands outside of his own country -- and kill him for an act that I suspected, but had no proof of. And how would this be different from what they did to your father?"

Syaoran stood there, with his mouth hanging open. He hadn't thought of it that way before. Kurogane sighed.

"You're a good kid, your heart is in the right place. I've always known that, or I wouldn't have agreed to take you as a student. But you're going to lose that if you let the hunger for revenge take you over. I'm not saying that you can't feel anger, can't feel hatred. But you have to control it, make it your tool; you can't let it control you. If you're going to pick up a sword it had better be for the right reason. If your only aim in learning swordsmanship is hurting and killing people to satisfy your own feelings, then you can leave this house tonight. Is that clear?"

Syaoran swallowed. Looked at the floor, and muttered, "Yes, sensei."

"Good," Kurogane said gruffly, and then sat back a bit, relaxing his stare. "Now get moving, cleaning up the dinner dishes, and we'll take an hour or two before sunset to see how well you've been keeping up your drills."  


  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case anyone was wondering what's up with Tomoyo, she's deaf and mute from birth. The version of Tomoyo in the world of the Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle movie, the one with all the birdcages, was subject to this, and I found myself liking the idea enough to really want to use it here. Fai would have identified Tomoyo as a mage, gifted with telepathic power; she can read the thoughts of those nearby but can only 'speak' to them if she is touching their skin. Unless, of course, the other person were also a mage; but there are so few magic-users in Nihon that this has never come up.


	5. The Other Side

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Fai dines with the princess, and receives new orders from his king.

The palace itself had been in sight for half a day before he finally turned the corner on the mountain pass that lead to the main road. Ruval had been carved out of a mountain peak, and was as high and visible as the mountains themselves; now, standing at the crest of the ridge, he could see into the valley that surrounded it, the smaller buildings of the palace town clinging to the slopes, and the wide road that zigged and zagged its way determinedly up the mountain until it finally peaked at the glittering castle itself. Beyond it, the Windhome mountains rolled up into higher peaks still, topped with the fantastic blue-white sparkle of ice; a startling backdrop against the marble-carved palace spires. Home.

Bella let out a weary snort of breath, posture sagging. Fai laid his hand gently on her neck, promising rest and food and kindly attention and above all, shelter, if she could make the final ascent. He didn't blame her for her weariness; he'd ridden hard, to cover the distance to the Ceres border in three days and from the border to the palace in one more, and he'd driven even her willing great heart close to its limits.

 _Just a little further_ , he thought, and encouraged her up to a walk again. The road passed between narrow, terraced fields of cropland on their way through the valley, long withered and choked in frost. The sunlight had already fled the valley floor, and cut a slanting path across the steep slopes, creeping interminably upwards as the sun sank behind them.

The guards posted at the lower gate, dressed heavily in bulky furs, recognized him and waved him through with passing comments of _Welcome back, m'lord Flowright, his majesty is expecting you_. The lower streets were already half-deserted, the autumn twilight bringing an icy chill that warned people of a much deeper cold to come, when the sun went down.

The few people who still hurried through the narrow stone streets lifted their faces and called in glad recognition as Fai passed, some calling questions -- _where have you been?_ \-- he responded with a tired smile and a wave, but did not stop to answer their questions. He probably could have stopped here, rested before making the climb, cared for Bella; any of the townspeople would likely have been willing to let him into their homes, and shared what little they had with him. But the urgency that had driven him so far would not let him rest here, so close to his goal, so he drove onwards.

By the time he mounted the last hairpin turn, he could feel Bella shaking with the strain underneath him. He glanced out over the precipice, over the frost-gilded stone railings that lined the drop. From this height and angle, you could see all the way back down the valleys and passes to the lowlands, all Nihon territory. From here, you could almost imagine you could see the whole world.

The guards here, too, recognized him, and saluted; there were also a pair of men in servant's outfits, wrapped in cloaks against the cold, presumably waiting for him. "Welcome home, my lord Flowright," one of them said -- Fai recognized his face, but could not call up his name. "We're glad that you've returned to us safely."

"Glad to be back," Fai returned the courtesy, giving them a polite smile. With some effort and a touch of regret he dismounted, keeping a soothing hand tangled in Bella's mane as he did so; three days staying off of it, mostly, had healed his ankle at least to the extent that he could stand, although it still throbbed in protest when it took his weight. Not for the first time, Fai wished that he had ever been able to get the hang of healing magic. "Could one of you take care of this horse, please? She chose to travel with me all the way from Nihon, and she's very tired."

"Of course, sir!" One of the servants hurried forward, although he then paused, hesitating, wondering how to take control of the horse with no halter or bridle. Fai grinned a little, and gave Bella a last pat, encouraging her to go with this man, who would feed and take care of her.

The other servant addressed Fai earnestly. "What about you, my lord? You must be exhausted, yourself. Are you injured? Do you need assistance?"

"I can manage, thank you," he returned politely. "What I most need now is to talk to His Majesty. I have some very urgent news to give to him."

"Yes, my lord. His Majesty is waiting for you." The servant turned and lead the way; not that Fai needed the guidance, but it would be unsuitable for him to go about the palace unattended. The man added, over his shoulder, "Lord Yukito had told us that you would be returning alone, and that you were injured some way, but he could not divine any more clearly what had happened."

He knew the palace corridors like the back of his hand, but it felt like a vast labyrinth today, a maze of softly gleaming white corridors that hurt his eyes. His own condition was likely to blame, he knew; his injuries hadn't really had time to heal, and he was shaking and dizzy from lack of sleep. As well as from another lack, which he steadfastly ignored. But he couldn't stop, couldn't let himself collapse, not yet, when he was so close. _I have to see His Majesty. I have to tell him everything. I have to._ At least it was warm, inside the palace.

King Ashura was waiting for him in the throne room; he stood from his seat as Fai entered, and Fai half-staggered across the distance and fell to a kneeling position before him. As always he was flooded with a rush of emotions when he came into Ashura's presence. Love, adoration, the desire to please; the sharp pang of anxiety, fearing that he would somehow disappoint; and now, the heavy, bitter bite of shame, knowing that he had. Knowing that he had failed.

"Sire," he choked out, bowing his head.

"Fai," The king acknowledged him, voice full of gentle fondness, of sorrow. He stepped forward and pulled Fai back to his feet -- Ashura was one of the few people in Ceres who approached Fai in height -- and embraced him. Fai closed his eyes as the shame surged through him, and swallowed hard to control it. "My son. I'm so glad you've returned, alive."

Fai stepped back, and bowed again, then straightened when he thought he had his voice under control. "My king. I... I am sorry. I couldn't save the others."

"We suspected that must be so. When Yukito reported the link had broken, we feared the worst; when he picked up your presence again, very weak and traveling north at great speed, we knew you must be traveling alone. What happened to you? Were you found by Nihon soldiers?"

"No, sire." It filled Fai with mortification, that Ashura could think he had been so careless, to let himself be seen, and yet... was the truth any better? "We were found by something else."

"Something else?" Ashura's attention was arrested, still. "Outside of the wards? Nothing of Nihon?"

"Yes, sire. In the wilderness. Something -- not of any human kingdom. The Nihon... local guide, I encountered, called them demons. Nothing natural to this world at all. They traveled in some kind of magical concealment -- of course Yukito wouldn't have been able to see through it. They came on us so quickly, I couldn't --"

He was beginning to babble, all his frenzied distress and worry and guilt pouring out of him, until Ashura held up a hand, arresting his speech. "Enough," he said. Fai shut up.

Ashura stood silent, eyes narrowed in thought for a long, solemn moment, and then nodded. "This is clearly an important story. And a long one. I will want as complete an explanation of these -- creatures, as you can give me, but not now. You're clearly exhausted, and injured. And I know you, Fai. When was the last time you ate?"

Fai shifted uneasily, casting his glance to the side to avoid Ashura's gaze. "After the attack. Four days ago."

"Ah," Ashura shook his head, and then sighed. "My Fai, you never change. Very well. You will go from my presence for five hours; long enough to rest, and wash, and have the doctor attend you. And you will eat. This is not a request; I am prepared to make it a royal command, if needed."

For some reason Fai thought of Kurogane in that moment; how he'd said almost the exact same words. Very strange, to find some likeness between the soldier of Nihon and his king. "Yes, Sire."

Ashura studied him a moment more, and then smiled. "After the doctor has seen you, I will send my daughter to you. She has been terribly worried about you, and it will greatly ease her mind to see you safe and well."

"I'm sorry to have caused her distress. I hope she'll forgive me."

"I imagine she can be persuaded. I'll have her bring you your meal. Since we knew you would return today, she's spent much of the afternoon in the kitchens. I believe that cooking for you was the only  
thing she felt she could do."

Fai sighed. He really wasn't going to get out of this one, it looked like. "I understand. I won't offend her by refusing."

"Good." Ashura's grave expression lightened with a smile. "It will be good practice, for when the two of you are married."

Fai cringed inwardly, as he always did when the king's plans for matrimony were mentioned. He gave a weak laugh, although he knew it hadn't really been a joke. "Surely not, Sire. Aren't I much too old for her? She's only fourteen, far too young to consider marriage."

"Nonsense," Ashura said firmly. "There is no more suitable match for the princess than someone of your rank, and no one more trusted and valuable to our court. No, that's been well decided. So in order not to offend your future wife, Fai, you'd better go and clean up before dinner. And then, afterwards --" and all humor faded from his eyes, from his voice, "We will talk."

\------------------

The royal physician -- an older, experienced man with only a little magic -- fussed over Fai, confirmed Kurogane's field diagnosis of the injury over his eye (scarring, but no permanent damage to his vision) declared his ankle to be sprained (tried to force a cane on him, which Fai declined) and washed out his cuts and scrapes with a solution that stung like fire. He also poked at Fai's chest, diagnosing some hairline fractures of the ribs, and his head, guessing a concussion; all in all, nothing Fai hadn't already known. He eventually turned Fai out of the infirmary with a jar of painkillers, an admonition not to get into any more fights, and stern instructions to rest for a week.

Fai was just relieved to be rid of the bandages over his eye, and despite all the prodding, he did feel much better once washed, the lacerations cleaned, and into a fresh change of clothes. He was pulling on a pair of boots -- higher ankles, stiffer than the ones he normally wore, these should give him some support -- when there was a knock on the door of his outer chamber. Without waiting for any response from him, the door opened and closed, and Fai's second-in-command, Yukito, popped his head into the inner chamber. "My lord!" he said. "You're all right!"

"Yukito," Fai said, and gave him a strained smile as Yukito rushed forward, grabbed his hands and bent his head over them. "Yes, I'm fine. There was no need to worry."

"No need to worry?!" Yukito said indignantly, raising his head to glare at Fai through his thick, heavy spectacles. "You disappeared off the face of the map! I thought you'd died and left me with all your duties! I was ready to kill you when you turned up alive after all!"

Fai laughed. Yukito chuckled with him, then went on more seriously, "The others -- didn't make it...?"

"No," Fai said, sobering up. "I'm so sorry, Yukito. I know Ryuo... was a friend of yours."

"Yes, well..." Yukito wilted slightly, breath catching. "It was a dangerous assignment. We -- we all knew that."

"But not in the ways we had anticipated." Fai sighed, and ran a hand through his damp hair. "Listen, Yukito, I have to debrief to Ashura later tonight. I'd like you to sit in; these are things you'll need to know, as well. The short version is that we've got much bigger problems to deal with than the magic-users of Nihon. Bigger problems, and nastier problems, that carry their own field of magical concealment --"

Yukito's face lit in comprehension. "So _that's_ what that was?"

"Yes. I could barely see through it from yards away, I'm not surprised you couldn't see anything from here. And worst of all, they're soul-drinkers."

Yukito's eyes widened, and he sat back a little, and looked Fai up and down, then again, with more than his eyes. "Is that what tore you up so badly?" he asked, in an awed voice.

Fai grimaced; he could only imagine what a state his aura was in right now, but it was the reason he hadn't dared try any spells on his way home except the magic to call and control the horse. "No. Actually. I did this to myself." And to the others, as well. "When we were ambushed, I had to shield us -- I'll explain why later. And then... we were surrounded, I panicked -- I tried to open a portal, to get us somewhere safe."

Yukito was staring at him as though he'd lost his mind. "You tried to do a conjuration -- under combat conditions? _Inside_ a secondary spell?"

"Yes. It was stupid. I know." In the three days' journey since then he'd had time to think of a hundred, a thousand things he could have done differently, but there was no magic that could go back and unravel the past. _Fortunately._ "I lost control... the two spells' boundaries crossed, and it backfired on me."

"That's incredible, that you even got it to work at all!" Yukito was looking at him with an alarm that bordered on awe. "You're lucky to be alive."

Fai gave him a tight, bitter smile. "I am. The others aren't."

"Oh," Yukito said, quelled.

Fai sighed again. "I'll explain in more detail later. For the time being, all I need is a new staff. Oh. And some paper and ink. All of my notes were lost in the ambush, but I remember most of them, and I can get to work putting them down for you."

"All right. Can you use mine, until I can get you a new one made?" Yukito offered. "It's attuned to me, not you, but it should work for the basics."

"Right now, all I mostly need it for is to lean on, since I wouldn't let the doctor weigh me down with a cane!" Fai flashed Yukito a bright smile. "That's pretty basic, wouldn't you say?"

"Yes, certainly." Yukito stood up -- for a moment, Fai envied him the ease of movement. "Are you ready to go now? The princess is waiting for you, but I wanted a chance at you first."

Fai took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. "Yes. I'm ready."

\------------------

"Fai-niisan!"

Fai braced himself for a full-body tackle, but Princess Sakura, her eyes wide with concern, managed to slow her headlong rush as she reached him, and only grabbed him in a fierce hug, rather than actually knocking him over. "You're alive! You're okay. I was so worried!"

For all that her body was small and light, her grip around him was iron-hard. Her head only came up to his chest, light brown strands escaping the headband to wisp across his chest. As always, battered by the sheer radiant exuberance of her presence, Fai felt a part of himself melt, like an ice chip warmed by the sun. With a sigh, he wrapped his arms around her and hugged her back. "I missed you too, flower-princess," he said gently, using his old nickname for her. "I'm sorry to worry you."

" _Are_ you okay?" she demanded as she released him, at least far enough to hold onto his arms and stare worriedly up at his face. "You look awful. Oh! I don't mean that, I'm sorry, that wasn't what I meant. You look fine, but you look like something awful happened to you!"

He smiled at her, brushed the back of his fingers lightly over her face, smoothed a stray strand of hair back. Her eyes were wide and green and radiating worry, and it touched him -- it still did, even after so long -- that anyone could care so much about _him,_ worry and be sad about _him._ The princess had been the light of his life ever since he had known her as a laughing, wobbling, ankle-clinging toddler; it had been she, more than any other, who taught him to smile again. "I'm all right now," he promised her.

"Yukito-san told me you were coming back today. And then Father said that I could see you, at least for a few hours. Are you hungry? I've been cooking, I wanted to have everything ready for when you came home." As she talked, she grabbed his hand and dragged him along behind her, through a cross-corridor into one of the smaller dining rooms.

"You know you don't have to cook," Fai reminded her, letting himself be dragged. "That's why we have a kitchen staff, after all, and they'll be very insulted if you tell them their work isn't good enough."

"I know I don't have to, but I wanted to!" Sakura insisted, pushing him firmly towards the table and seating him in a chair. "Cook always says that you can show your feelings best through things you make with your hands and your heart. So I wanted to make something special for you, Fai-niisan!"

She dashed around, setting dishes and silverware in front of him, covering and uncovering dishes and serving up food in front of him. The smell hit him in the face like a blow; it made the hard, curdled empty place inside of him shiver and howl with demanding need.

"There!" She finished her preparations and stood back, hands clasped on one of the spoons and beaming at him. "All ready, please go ahead and eat! Tell me if it tastes good!"

Fai looked at the food, and at her, and wished that King Ashura wouldn't do this to him, at the same time he knew exactly why he did. He went for so long putting off food, ignoring hunger... until the hunger became a monster inside him, clawing and ravaging at his insides, and then it was an enemy he could fight, tame it through sheer force of will until it subsided inside him, becoming a dull throbbing knot under his breastbone. Until the very sight and smell of food made him nauseous, until the taste made him sick -- until he didn't _want_ to eat any more, until it was so much easier just to stay hungry.

He didn't want to eat, but he didn't want to make Sakura unhappy, either. So he took a deep breath, and a spoonful of potatoes, and he ate.

The first bite was the hardest, as always, fighting against the gagging nausea... but he swallowed it down and it helped that it _was_ good, tasted good, felt good once he'd gotten past that first bite. He smiled at her, and lied through his teeth, "It's wonderful, Sakura-chan. Thank you."

She lit up with joy and he couldn't regret it, he could make her so happy just by doing such a simple thing, and anything that made her so happy was okay, wasn't it? It couldn't be bad. "Won't you eat with me, please? There's more here than just I can eat, and you know I hate eating alone."

"Oh, okay!" Sakura agreed, and she dragged up a second chair, and dealt out a second portion of food. Fai distracted himself by watching her, amused by her eating habits as familiar as they were; she would fill her plate with only a few bites of each kind of food at a time, polish them off neatly, and then go for something different, carefully making sure that no two different kinds of food ever touched each other.

"So what have you been doing, while I was gone, flower-princess?" he asked, breaking into the silence. "Not getting into too much trouble, I hope."

"No!" She pouted at him. "I'm not a kid any more, you know... I haven't broken anything or gotten into any trouble for ages. I guess I spent most of my time doing lessons." She sighed. "There's not much to do outside any more, now that summer's over. I wish it weren't so short."

"No," Fai agreed. "Winter is no time for a little girl to be outdoors." When she glared at him for that, he laughed and added, "Or for anyone to be outdoors, at least here! Do you know, there are still leaves on the trees, down in Nihon?"

"Really?" She lit up at the thought. "It must be like it's spring and summer all year round, down there... Do you think I'll ever get the chance to see it?" she said wistfully.

"You never know," Fai said consolingly. "A lot of things can happen." _And if we do end up taking part of Nihon_ , he thought, _you'll get to see all the springs and summers your heart desires._

"I don't suppose I could go with you some time, Fai-niisan," Sakura said wistfully, but without much hope. Fai smiled, and shook his head. "Oh -- I know. It's dangerous, and Father would never allow it. I just wish that I could go places, sometimes! I wish I could get out of this castle. It's so lonely when you're gone, there's hardly anything to do, or anyone to talk to."

"I'm sorry, Princess," Fai said, and paused in thought. "I'm sure there's _somebody_ you could play with -- what about Nokoru, from down in the village? He's about your age, and from a nice family." One of an appropriate rank to send their child to keep the Princess company.

"Oh, him," Sakura said, with a brief scowl crossing her features. "He's... well, he's okay, I guess. But he's just so -- so pushy and bossy!"

The laugh that bubbled out of Fai's throat then was real and spontaneous, and threatened to choke him on his food. "The Princess thinks _Nokoru_ is bossy?" he said between chortles. Sakura glared at him, but he couldn't stop laughing. "Well then, it must certainly be true!"

"Stop teasing me! You always tease me!" Sakura actually stamped her foot, sitting in the chair. "He's -- well, the problem is just that he always gets to decide what we do! And he's always going on about how this or that activity isn't appropriate for a lady, and a lady should always act this way and that way, and he's just _so_ boring!"

Fai turned away and disguised a laugh as a coughing fit, until he was sure that he had it under control. When he thought he did, he turned back to her with a sympathetic smile. "That's terrible, it's true," he agreed. "You know, if you'd really like something new to keep you occupied, have you thought about studying magic? I'm sure Yukito, and some of the other apprentices would be willing to teach you, the basics at least." _In fact, I'll make sure they'll be willing._

"Oh! Do you think I could?" Sakura sat back, her face reflecting mirrored excitement and doubt. "I mean -- I mean, I know I'm just a girl, but..."

"There's nothing that says a female can't learn magic," Fai said easily. "In fact, did you know that in Nihon, it's _only_ the women who use magic?"

"Really?" Sakura jumped out of her seat, and darted around the table to fling her arms around his neck. "I'll do it! Okay! Thank you so much, Fai-niisan!"

Fai smiled, and hugged her back, and the empty hunger that had been gnawing at the pit of his stomach for weeks was finally eased.

\------------------

When he arrived in Ashura's chambers later in that evening he felt much better; stronger, steadier. Ashura was seated at a table spread with parchment, with several quills available for making notes; Yukito stood quietly in the background nearby, a pale round-eyed shadow like a perching owl.

Now that he was calmer, he was able to seat himself and give a more businesslike account of his last mission, starting from when their scouting party had left Ruval, two weeks before, and leading up to the attack. He was able to recount the deaths of his companions and the description of the demons in the same flat, businesslike tone as he had used to catalogue the uneventful days of observation. Ashura did not castigate him for his failure to detect the attackers until it was too late, nor for losing control of his magic in such an unforgivable way; but Fai could still feel the weight of his disapproval and disappointment, like heavy water all around him, drowning him.

The king listened in silence for the first part of the narrative, growing more intent as Fai described the ambush; the first and second demons, the hideously lethal nature of the swarm and their bloodthirst.

"And you're certain," Ashura said when Fai paused for breath, "that these 'demons' were artificially created? Not natural?"

Fai hesitated, then raised his hand palm-up. "Created... I can't be positive. But they were definitely not any kind of natural being from this world, unquestionably they were designed and set loose for a purpose. I got a close look at a few of them, after they were dead; they could not have... been born or grown naturally. They were either created by some magic-user in this world, or brought by some magic-user from outside this world. Either way, we have a new enemy."

Ashura contemplated this for a moment, one finger stroking slowly down the side of his throat. "You do not think it could have been the work of the Nihon magic-users themselves? Creating some new weapon to use against us?"

"Absolutely not, Sire," Fai said firmly. "The demons... seem to have been their enemy for a long time, far longer than we've even known about them. The wards themselves may have been placed to repel the demons, and it's only a side benefit that they also repel human armies. My reading of the ruined wards that I described to you suggest that it was destroyed by an attack of demons. There is no way that they could be allies."

"Hmm," Ashura mused. "So there is a third player in the game... but whose ally will he prove...?"

Fai eyed his King uneasily. "Surely you would not consider attempting some kind of alliance with this... monster-maker, Sire?"

"I consider everything. That's my job," Ashura chided him gently, and Fai reddened, staring at the table. Ashura smiled. "It's true, it seems an unlikely proposition," he conceded. "An enemy of my enemy... could very well be my enemy still. And unless we can find out more about this mysterious magician, it's all a rather academic question. We have matters closer to home to attend to, right now."

Fai breathed relief. "Yes, sire," he said.

"For one thing. This warrior of Nihon, that you encountered." Ashura set down the quill, and leveled his gaze squarely on Fai. "Tell me more about him."

Fai hesitated, for the first time. He had.... not lied exactly, not ever lied to Ashura, but he had... tried to downplay the role of Kurogane in the aftermath of his ruined mission. He wasn't sure why, exactly; it wasn't that he was trying to claim the man's achievements for his own, or anything silly like that, it was more that... he felt a vague compulsion to keep Kurogane and Ashura as far separated as possible.

But he could not refuse a direct command; reluctantly, he said, "He was a warrior... a hunter, hunting the demons specifically. He was armed and armored for it, seemed to have long experience with fighting them. He was," and Fai had to smile in fond recollection as the memory flashed by him, Kurogane moving in battle like a dance, deadly grace and power, "very good at his trade."

"Only a warrior, then?" Ashura asked. "So it is possible, if called for, to defeat the demons using only ordinary men and arms?"

"Well," Fai hesitated again, he felt obscurely like he was violating Kurogane's privacy, "maybe, but... I think this man had some latent magical talents of his own. He called it swordsmanship, but he used some moves that were definitely sorcery. I believe it's only his socialization which leads him to deny his talents and consider himself a plain warrior."

"Really," Ashura's eyes were sharp on him, and Fai resisted the urge to squirm uncomfortably. "So, Nihon has warrior-mages of its own. Already."

Fai hurried to qualify. _"Latent_ talents. Entirely untrained. He explicitly confirmed to me that in Nihon, only women are ever trained as magic-users, and most women do not take combat roles."

"Assuming he was telling the truth," Ashura temporized.

"He was about that, Sire," Fai said with utter confidence. Not like Kurogane could have sat inches away from Fai's hands and lied to him, without Fai sensing it, no matter how diminished his magic at the time.

Ashura tilted his head to one side, accepting his assurances. Heartened, Fai continued. "He didn't talk very much around me -- he already suspected I was a spy. And yet... even knowing that, he did not act like an enemy to me. He seemed to see himself as apart from internecine conflicts, above the normal military chain of command. I believe..."

Fai paused a moment, running over the bits and pieces he'd gathered, sorting them together to try and piece together the whole picture. "I believe that he and any other demon-hunters like him are the elite, exceptions to their normal rules. They equip them and train them to fight the demons and that's _all_ that they do. Defending their borders against the demons is important enough, and difficult enough, that they must devote these resources to that project, and nothing else."

Ashura nodded slowly as he absorbed Fai's analysis, his eyes glinting in the candles bracketing the table. "I see," he said. He laced his hands together on the table and pressed them against his mouth, silent for a long moment, lost in thought. Fai and Yukito waited, somewhat anxiously, for him to continue.

At length he straightened up again, tapping his fingers on the table. "Then that only leaves the question of what our response must be, to this new threat," he said. His eyes flicked over to Yukito, in the corner. "Yukito, leave us. I have some things I must discuss with Fai, alone."

Yukito bowed, shot an anxious glance at Fai, and left the room. As the door swung closed behind him, he heard the king say, "I have a new mission for you, Fai."

\------------------

Maybe it was attributing a lot of human feelings to a city, but by the time he set out again, more than a week later, Kurogane felt that Edo was as glad to be rid of him as he was to be rid of it. The tension began to unwind as soon as he was past the city gates, past the open stares and the buzzing whispers, and it eased slowly out of his shoulders as he rode the well-paved main roads, passing sunken fields of oats and barley and rice near reaping, groves of fruit and mulberry trees heavy with harvest.

It was good to be out in the open again, free again of the obligations and expectations, the intrigues and the gossips of the castle. But it wasn't until he was outside of the wards entirely, and the stone-and-iron gate fell back into place with a shattering crash behind him, that he began to feel... depressed, as well.

It was _good_ to be alone, Kurogane told himself, as he guided his mount over a treacherous, gopher-hole strewn field towards the overgrown forest path ahead. Good not to be saddled with an escort of walking talking targets this time. He worked best alone, and he _liked_ the solitude, the simplicity of it.

Why wasn't it working for him, this time? It wasn't as though his last sojourn in the city had been so enjoyable that he'd wanted to stay any longer; it wasn't even as though he missed people back in the city more than he usually did. If anything there was a new coolness there, between himself and his student, even between himself and Tomoyo. Maybe that was why; even when he went out he was used to having them still be there, waiting for him to return, and wishing him well wherever he went. The way his mother had waited for his father, when he rode out, in a similar manner.

Kurogane hunched slightly, glaring fiercely at nothing in particular. Why was he thinking so much about his parents, recently? He hadn't thought of them in years, well, that wasn't quite true; but he hadn't let memory of them bother him in years. It had been years since the last time he woke from nightmares in the middle of the night, haunted by images of black shadows drifting across red, flashing blades that came from nowhere and disappeared into nowhere. Years since he'd last considered the possibility that he might be disappointing them, somehow, that he wasn't following the path they'd meant him to follow.

 _This is stupid._ He'd wanted to be back on patrol, to be left alone and have some peace and quiet, to focus on what was really important. Now he was. He wished a demon would show up, or maybe five or six; a really good fight would help him get his edge back, get his balance back. Assuming he survived it, of course. There was always that.

Maybe Amaterasu was right, for a change; maybe he really did have an obligation to take a partner, train someone else up to demon hunter status. But it wasn't that _simple,_ damn it, it wasn't like you just picked somebody out of a crowd to come do it. It would take years of training, first -- Kurogane had trained in the use of the sword since he was big enough to hold one, and that wasn't the sort of thing you just picked up overnight. The only student he'd spent enough time to feel confident in was Syaoran.

Could Syaoran join him someday, become a hunter like him? Kurogane contemplated the vision for a moment, then snorted and shook his head at the idea. Syaoran was still just a boy, still green. Even if he had the drive to hunt demons -- and Kurogane wasn't completely certain he did, not while he was still revenge-obsessed with Ceres -- he just didn't have the reflexes to survive in a one-on-one fight with a demon, he didn't have the _resources._

But -- perhaps someday. In a few years? Maybe? Kurogane sighed, and eased back in the saddle. It was going to be another long, empty patrol.

Maybe he'd get lucky, and a demon would try to bite his head off.

\------------------

He'd made camp in an old abandoned relay outpost he knew, a few days' ride away from where Suwa territory officially ended. The demons seemed to target Suwa a lot -- maybe because they'd gotten lucky there once, or for all Kurogane knew, they laid down some sort of pheromone trail like ants -- but there was still a lot more of the wall to cover than that. He built up the fire, and stretched aching muscles from the long day of riding, before he settled in front of it. It was starting to get a little colder. Damn, but he hated winter patrols.

A noise from out along the roads caught his attention, and his head came up, hand tightening on the hilt of Ginryuu as he came out of the half-doze. He listened; there, again. Hoofbeats. A horse. Who would be traveling along the old road, outside of the wards, at this time of night? Bandits? They weren't all that common outside the wards -- for obvious reasons -- but there were always some who were stupid or desperate enough to try their luck out in the wilderness.

He stood and put his back to the fire, drawing his sword -- better safe than sorry -- and then stopped, listened harder. The rhythm of the hoofs sounded familiar to him, somehow, although he couldn't quite place the sound. A smaller horse than his, without a doubt, with a lighter, quicker step. His head came up, eyes widening in disbelief. Surely it couldn't be...?

The rider came right up to the outpost, not bothering to sneak or in any way attempt to disguise his presence. Kurogane stared in disbelief as he came within the circle of firelight -- yes, it _was_ the same damn horse, now shod and sleek and better fed, and with a saddle on at the least. And it was the same damn wizard, too, as he came into the firelight too; same shock of pale blond hair, same bright blue eyes -- two of them, now, flashing at him in the light -- and the same stupid, infuriating, cheerful grin.

There were some differences, Kurogane noticed dazedly as Fai rode up to the doorway of the old outpost and then stopped. The half-destroyed and all-impractical cloth robes and coat he'd been wearing on his last trip were gone; instead, he seemed to be wearing smooth plated armor not unlike Kurogane's in concept, although his was infinitely thinner, smoother and with an odd blueish tinge to the plates. They rippled over each other, turning around the joints as Fai put up a hand to shield his eyes against the firelight, to try and make out his own silhouetted form. "That you, Kuro-chan?" he called cheerfully, and his voice _was_ the same.

"What the bloody hell are you doing here?" Kurogane managed in astonishment, sliding Ginryuu back into his back sheath. "I thought you were going home!"

"I was. I did. I came back," Fai replied, his voice amused. He dismounted -- still no halter or reins, Kurogane noticed with irritation -- and the mare clomped off to join his horse, exchanging whickers of greeting like they were old friends. "I thought I'd _never_ find you in all this wilderness. Thank goodness for Kuro-puu's insistence on lighting fires, huh?"

"All right, let's try this question again," Kurogane said. " _Why_ the bloody hell are you here? What do you mean -- looking for _me?_ "

"Yes. Well," Fai brushed at the front of his pants, leather riding gear over the armor. As he straightened up Kurogane caught sight of the hilt of a knife buckled at his hip -- his own knife. "With all these nasty demons running around unchecked, I thought maybe Kuro-puu might want some company." He glanced up and met Kurogane's astonished gaze, his own eyes crinkling in amusement. "How would you feel about taking on an apprentice Demon-Hunter?"

Kurogane stared at him for a good moment more, unable to believe that he'd actually heard what his ears just insisted they had heard -- before his face split into a wide grin.  


  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually did a lot of agonizing over the exact nature of Fai and Sakura's relationship. While it was obvious to me that Fai did not love Sakura romantically -- for one thing, he's gay, and for another, he helped change her diapers -- I was not at all certain that she would not be romantically in love with him. I had to consider the dynamic between her and Yukito in the original Card Captor Sakura series; it's very much in character for Sakura to be hopelessly in love with an attractive older man who treats her kindly, and Fai is very much her type. That she loves him powerfully is clear enough, and she's young enough that she's not yet fully aware of the difference between familial love and sexual or romantic love. Ultimately I decided to err on the side of her not being in love with Fai, having her address him as 'niisan' and to share Fai's discomfort at their betrothal.


	6. The Wide World, Part I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kurogane and Fai set out on a journey, and have an argument over a rabbit.

Starting the next morning, Kurogane was determined to put his new companion to the test, see what fighting skills he already possessed and which he had aptitude for. The first part of that testing was to get rid of _all_ his weapons, and divest Fai of his (not that he was carrying _any_ except the tantou, much to Kurogane's aggravation) and pull them both out into the middle of the clearing.

Fai looked around them, bemused. "What are we doing, Kuro-rin?" he asked cheerfully.

"First," Kurogane growled, "you don't call me _rin,_ or _chan,_ or any of those other stupid nicknames you come up with. My name is Kurogane. Say it right, or we're not going any further."

Fai folded his arms over his chest, looking thoughtful, then shook his head. "No," he said, "I don't think I can. That name is much too long and difficult for me to be able to remember. And besides, I think the other nicknames suit you better, since such a big, scary warrior needs an extra-cute name to make up for it -- "

He cut off there because Kurogane took a swipe at him, and he had to duck, or end up face first in the mud. "That wasn't nice, Kuro-pyon," he protested.

"There! Just then!" Kurogane jabbed a finger at him. "That nickname was as many syllables as saying my damn name would have been! Aren't you supposed to be a wizard? Isn't memorizing and remembering words supposed to be the sort of shit you do for a living?"

Fai pondered this, then shrugged. "Well," he said cheerfully, "I guess my head is so full from all the things I have to remember, I don't have the room left over to keep anything else in it!"

Privately, Kurogane thought this was likely.

"So what _are_ we doing?" Fai persisted, a sing-song whine in his voice that grated on Kurogane's nerves already. "It's _early._ Couldn't we be sleeping?"

"Normally at this hour I'd be in the saddle," Kurogane said. "But before I go anywhere with you, I need to know how good you are in a fight." His initial guess was going to be 'not very,' but he'd at least give Fai a chance to try; maybe he had some undeveloped martial potential that Kurogane could work with.

"Okay," Fai said agreeably. "Are we going to fight something?"

"Right now you're going to fight me," Kurogane said, with a sharp smile. "I want to test you in hand-to-hand first, see what your basic strength level is. Once I've determined that, we'll move on to weapons."

"Fight you?" Fai looked Kurogane over from spiky-armored head to iron-plated toe, looking dubious. "I don't think I like this idea..."

"Don't worry. I won't hurt you." Kurogane let his smirk grow into a broad, evil grin. "Too much."

He lunged forward, keeping his first blow openhanded so as not to impact Fai too hard -- but Fai was not there. He'd ducked to the side, so quickly and smoothly that Kurogane almost didn't realize he'd moved until his hands had closed on open air. "Stop that," he growled, and swung again, this time with a closed fist.

"Oh," Fai said, and dodged again, this time fetching up several yards away, "Why?"

"Hit me back!" Kurogane commanded, his gleeful anticipation of a spar beginning to fade into annoyance. "Or at least stand still so I can hit you!"

"But I don't want to," the wizard said. "Either way, it looks like it would hurt."

"That's the idea!" Beginning to get pissed off, Kurogane pivoted and rushed at Fai, using all of his combat speed and resources, determined to pin Fai down. But somehow Fai evaded every move, weaving to the side and backwards, forcing Kurogane to keep extending after him. After several frustrated minutes of this, Kurogane was at the edge of the clearing, breathing hard, and Fai was crouched on the limb of a tree, looking down at him.

"Cut the crap!" Kurogane shouted up at him, venting his frustration by hitting the tree, hard enough to make it shake. "You said you wanted to learn how to hunt oni -- well, this is part of that!"

Fai tilted his head and looked down at Kurogane. "I don't think I understand," he said in a puzzled tone. "Are you saying that if a demon tries to hit me, I should let them? That doesn't sound like a very good thing to learn."

"You have to learn to _take_ a hit!" Kurogane insisted. "So get down from there!"

"I really think I'd prefer to learn not to be hit in the first place," Fai said thoughtfully. "If you don't mind, Kuro-pon."

Kurogane did mind. He continued to chase Fai around the clearing for an hour, before he finally gave up.

\----------------

They tried swords next.

"You hold onto this end, right, Kuro-pin?" Fai said brightly.

Kurogane gritted his teeth, corrected Fai's grip, and wondered why he had wanted a lunatic for a partner on this patrol in the first place.

\----------------

He tried knives next, because if Fai was going to carry one, he might as well learn how to use it.

This went slightly better; at the very least, Fai stopped clowning around and actually seemed to take the lesson seriously. The reach on the _tantou_ was much shorter than the long sword, barely a third of the distance, and consequently much lighter. Kurogane considered the knife something of a last-ditch defense anyway; if anything got close enough for you to use it, you'd damn well better know how to.

Since he didn't particularly feel like being repeatedly stabbed while Fai practiced, he upended a fallen log, tacked on a piece of red cloth at approximately heart height, and declared it a target dummy.

He showed Fai the basic strokes of parry, thrust and counter, set him to practice on the log, and stepped aside. When he thought Fai was absorbed in his task, attention focused on his weapon and his rhythm, he slipped behind him. Another thing that Fai was going to have to learn, and the sooner the better, was to develop a situational awareness of things behind him and to the sides. He couldn't afford to be taken by surprise.

It was Kurogane was surprised, however, when he pounced -- and stumbled forward to find himself holding nothing. Only the brush of blond hair against his arm signaled where Fai had ducked and twisted away. He whirled around to see the mage bounding across the clearing, moving much faster than Kurogane had thought him capable with, and scale the nearby tree with an ease that made him look like he was levitating up the side. Then he twisted around, half-hanging from the limb, to look straight at Kurogane. He was smiling.

Then something dark and sharp was coming straight towards him, and Kurogane instinctively ducked to the side. The blade that Fai had been practicing with struck dead center into the heart-target of the training dummy and hung there, quivering.

"Sorry, Kuro-chan," Fai called cheerfully. "You surprised me."

"Hmph," Kurogane straightened up, unwilling respect warring with his feelings of annoyance at being had. "I guess, if you're totally useless in hand-to-hand, climbing a tree when an enemy comes at you isn't the _worst_ response."

Fai laughed, and Kurogane scowled as he ripped the _tantou_ back out of the training dummy. "But that still doesn't change the fact that you only had _one_ weapon and you _threw it away,_ you _dumbass!"_

"If it wasn't meant to be thrown, why is it balanced for throwing?" Fai said reasonably.

"If you didn't mean to learn, why did you come out here in the first place?" Kurogane countered, but Fai just shrugged.

\----------------

Kurogane did carry a bow, disassembled, among the gear packed onto his horse. He didn't use it often, as kyuudo wasn't his strongest discipline; but there were times when it came in handy, and his training encouraged him to keep in practice on all his skills and to maintain all his gear in good order. Still, the wood was a little stiff when he unwrapped it from its sackcloth, the coiled bowstring a little dry. He dragged Fai over to it and showed him how to care for the weapon, to oil the bow and wax the string until it was stiff, how to brace the bow to string or unstring it without warping the wood.

Fai seemed to get the hang of this quickly enough, and Kurogane moved the target to the far end of the clearing and instructed Fai on how to hold the bow, how to draw it and nock the arrow. Fai seemed to have no trouble pulling it back, which surprised Kurogane a bit; this bow was short, had to be on order to carry it on a horse, but a heavier draw to make up for the lack of force. Maybe he had some aptitude after all.

He had Fai practice stance and posture for an hour before he finally broke out the arrows, valuable steel-tipped iron arrowheads.

"Bring the arrow up to your face, and sight along it, down your arm," Kurogane instructed. "When you release the string, be careful not to graze yourself with it; it's got a lot of force behind it and you can lose the skin off your face or your arm that way. Don't be upset if you can't hit the target at first, there's a lot of variation in the wind and the height of the drop."

"Okay," Fai said, raising the point of his arrow and adjusting his grip on the string as instructed.

Kurogane walked around him, squinting at his posture, before he nodded grudging approval. "Good enough," he said. "All right, shoot."

Fai released the arrow. Kurogane followed it across the clearing, and blinked as it struck dead in the center of the target's "heart." He was about to comment on the luck of the shot, when a hiss and a twang from beside him whipped his attention back to Fai; the mage was moving smoothly and rapidly, drawing each arrow and releasing it in quick enough succession that two of them were in the air at once; and all of them landed on the heart-target, inches away from each other.

"It's really a lot easier when the target isn't moving," Fai said cheerfully, lowering the bow.

Kurogane stared at the target, and back at Fai. He bit back on the first two replies that came to mind, the first being glaringly obvious, and the second unnecessarily profane. Finally, in a tone of voice that was almost calm, he said, "Why didn't you tell me you already had training with the bow?"

Fai grinned at him cheekily. "But Kuro-teacher was enjoying himself so much!"

Clearly, Kurogane was going to have to check his initial assumptions about Fai's fighting prowess, if they were both going to survive this trip.

  
\--------------------------------

  
He was forced to revisit a number of his initial assumptions, over the next few days.

The weapons' training was the first. The second was when, later that evening, he ran a mental calculation of how long his food supplies would last when split two ways, and wondered aloud where they were going to get enough food to last the circuit.

Fai had given him a bemused look, and walked off into the woods.

He returned an hour later with an armful of food, autumn forest harvest; greens, mushrooms, a variety of nuts, some thick and juicy root vegetables. Kurogane had been impressed despite himself. He spent plenty of time on patrol, but he usually carried his food with him. It wasn't that he didn't know how to live off the land in a pinch, but he wasn't very good at it, and it was time-consuming enough that didn't like taking time from traveling or tracking to hunt or gather.

Fai cooked the dinner, too, which was probably just as well; like hunting, Kurogane knew the basic idea of cooking, but it was something he didn't like doing. He even consented to peel the potatoes that Fai handed to him, looking forward to a change from oat hardbread and dried jerky. He sniffed at the appetizing smells coming from the stewpot, and said, "Hey, how about some fresh meat to go with that?"

"Do you have any?" Fai inquired.

"No, but I figured you could..." Kurogane raised his knife hand and wiggled his fingers in the air. "I mean, you called up a horse out of thin air, right? You could probably get us a rabbit or a goose or something we could eat."

"I probably could." Fai put the lid back on the stewpot, and wandered away, standing at the edge of the clearing with his arms folded over his chest and sucking at his lower lip. Kurogane gave the stewpot a wary look and kept peeling, hoping it wasn't going to burn or explode or something.

After about five minutes, Fai unfolded his arms, bent over, and picked something off the ground. When he turned around he was holding a rabbit in his hands, carefully supporting the small body in his arms. "Will this do?" he asked.

Kurogane was pleased, but also unnerved. It was one thing to hunt a rabbit, and another to have it hop right up to the cooking pot. "Fastest way to hunt I ever saw," he remarked.

"Uh huh," Fai said, and bent his head over the rabbit. "He was running away from a fox, that was why he was in the area. He got separated from his brother when the fox attacked."

Kurogane blinked. "How do you know that?"

"He told me." Fai's lips curved in a smile, and he gently touched the rabbit's ears. "His name is, mm, I guess Juniper is a good translation. He came from a warren not too far from here, but it was destroyed in a mudslide after the last heavy rain. He escaped with his brother and a few others, and since then they've been searching for a new place to live. He's hoping the fox didn't get his brother, but he hasn't found him yet."

Kurogane stared, knife paused mid-scrape. After a moment Fai lifted his head and smiled brightly at him. "So, shall we have him for dinner?" he said.

"You expect me to eat him after everything you just said?!" Kurogane threw the finished potato onto the plate. "I don't want to hear the name and life story of something I'm going to eat! Why did you have to tell me that?"

Fai tilted his head, looking puzzled. "What difference does it make?" he said. "It still would have been true, even if I didn't tell you."

"Augh! No! Just -- just put him back, okay? Let him go find his brother!" He was beginning to really hate magic. Or maybe he just hated magic when Fai did it.

Fai shrugged. "If you say so, Kuro-pu." He carefully placed the rabbit back on the ground; it stood stock still for a moment, as if confused, before starting and bolting back into the underbrush. Kurogane thought he could sympathize.

Kurogane rubbed at his forehead, not sure if the headache that was coming on was from hunger, or just Fai-induced. He turned back to peeling the roots that Fai had brought in, picking up the next one. "All right, we'll just eat vegetable soup, then." He gave Fai a sour glance. "Unless you're going to tell me next that this potato's name was Larry, and he was working to save money to buy medicine for his desperately sick mother, or something like that."

Fai laughed, emptying the bowl of peeled carrots into the stewpot. "Of course not, silly Kuro-bunbun. Potatoes don't have names."

"Good."

"They mostly just call each other 'Hey, you.' "

\----------------

"I think the stew is almost ready," Fai said, and came over to serve it. He dished it out onto a plate, and handed it over to Kurogane. "Here you go, dinner's up."

Kurogane glanced at the amount of soup left in the dish, and went digging in his own pack for the traveling supplies; they could space them out a good deal longer with gathered food, and the dried hard food would be a lot more palatable with fresh hot food to accompany it. He split the total methodically between the two of them, and handed Fai back his portion.

For a moment Fai looked confused; it always gave Kurogane a feeling of satisfaction to share his confusion, even if, as now, he had no idea what the problem was. "But this was for you," he said.

"What were you planning to eat, then, grass?" Kurogane narrowed his eyes at Fai, remembering that they'd had this conversation before. He modulated his voice to a commanding growl "Sit. Eat."

Fai did so, looking faintly stunned. Kurogane glared at him until he actually took the first bite, then turned to his own food. He had no idea why Fai wouldn't eat unless specifically told to, but considering that Fai also _talked to rabbits,_ that was hardly the weirdest thing about his new companion.

  
\--------------------------------

  
Weapons training continued each day, in the evenings after they'd made camp but before they lost the autumn light completely. Since swordsmanship was clearly hopeless, and Fai still refused to stand still and let Kurogane evaluate him in hand-to-hand, he focused both of their efforts mainly on _kyuudo_. Kurogane hoped, somewhat forlornly, that if he could make enough of the principles stick, then maybe some of that knowledge would transfer over to the other disciplines.

He dragged Fai over a thorough explanation of how the bow and arrows were made, how to care for and maintain them, and even the basics of how to construct new ones in an emergency. Fai absorbed it all with a cheerful good will, and it didn't take Kurogane too long to get into an easy mentor-student relationship with him, not unlike the dynamic he had with Syaoran.

True, Fai was older than his ward -- Kurogane estimated him in his late teens, on the cusp of adulthood -- but in some ways that was just as well. There was none of the confusion and conflicted drives of adolescence in him; for all his sometimes childlike silliness, at other times he could show a gratifying maturity. Fai learned things so quickly that within a few days Kurogane decided to teach him some of the more advanced ki techniques that he used in fighting oni.

"Inhale as you draw the bow back," Kurogane instructed him. "The breath is the source of your energy. You need to focus it into your center, feel it move through your arms and down the weapon. Don't try to move too fast, or you'll lose it."

Fai complied, although Kurogane could tell by his bemused expression that he wasn't quite getting this. "What am I shooting at, Kuro-ki?" he asked, half-complaining.

"Nothing, right now; you don't release the shot until your ki is ready. You need to focus your attention on the point of the arrow, just beyond where it's nocked at your bow. That's your point of ignition."

"How am I supposed to ignite it?"

"You have to gather energy and heat from everywhere in your body, and then release it at the same time you release the arrow," Kurogane said. "Try it now. Focus."

Kurogane crossed his arms and sat back, watching with narrow eyes as Fai tried. He could see the shift of stance and posture as Fai inhaled, drew the bow slowly back; by half-closing his eyes he could see the build of energy in the wizard's muscles, through his center. He wasn't very good at it, Kurogane observed with a certain hint of smugness; the flow of ki was shaky, the shape not well controlled. But it was a start.

"Now," Kurogane said, when after several tries he thought Fai was getting a handle on it. "Focus that energy on the tip of the arrow, and release it at the same time you release the string."

He was watching Fai's face and his ki at the same time, which was how he was able to see it; Fai's brows pinched in, the bemused expression turning into something more frustrated; all at once the gathered energy from his center dissipated, dissolving back into the rest of the body. Fai let out a huffed breath, an exasperated sound, and released the shot; the arrow zipped away, blurring through the air to strike the target, where it burst into blue flames.

Kurogane stared at the arrow, then at Fai, for a stunned moment before he managed to put together what happened. Fai lowered the bow and smiled brightly at him. "What the hell was that?" Kurogane growled.

"That was what you wanted. Right? For the arrow to be on fire?" Fai's eyes were wide and innocent, although his breathing was a little faster than usual.

"Not that way! You cheated -- you used magic!" Kurogane snarled. He stormed over to the target and upended the prepared battered bucket of water over it, before it burned down half the forest.

"But you wanted to me to use magic," Fai pointed out from behind him, but Kurogane was too furious by now to be drawn into the familiar argument.

"I wanted you to learn to do what I was telling you to do, not to take shortcuts and half-measures! You lost control of your ki -- I saw it break. You have to learn to control it!"

Fai sighed, a resigned and weary sound that Kurogane thought much better suited to his own mood. "Kuro-ki, are the oni particularly weak to one type of fire versus the other?"

"What?" Kurogane turned back to him, bafflement mixing with fury; in other words, a typical argument with Fai.

"I mean, is there something special about fire generated by ki, that hurts the oni especially?"

"They're weak to all kinds of fire." As far as Kurogane knew, anyway; he only tended to see the effects of his own attacks on them.

"Then what difference does it make whether it's fire from ki techniques, or from some other method? I did think the arrow was very useful," Fai offered. "A very efficient weapon, to carry the spell from one place to another. Much more energy efficient than trying to focus it to travel over distances by itself."

"That's not the point!"

"What is the point, then?"

"The point is that you're supposed to be learning _this_ technique!"

"But I can't do this technique. It would be pretty awful to get into a fight and then not be able to do it, don't you think?"

"And you're never going to _be_ able to do it, you'll never master it if you take lazy shortcuts and cop out. You have to practice! You start out weak, and by putting hard work into it, you become stronger! That's what the process of learning is!"

"I don't agree with that," Fai said.

Kurogane stopped, and then said through his teeth, "What do you mean you don't agree with that?"

"It's just that the world is always full of more things to learn," Fai said. "Everyone's different. Some things are always going to be easy for some people, impossible for others. I've studied just one subject for years and I know I've barely scratched the surface of everything that's out there. I could live a hundred lifetimes and still not learn everything there is to know. And we don't have a hundred lifetimes; we only have a short time before we'll have to fight another demon again. So why should I waste so much time beating away at one thing which I don't have the talent for, when I could move on to something else that's more useful for fighting them?

He smiled cheerfully at Kurogane. "That's my philosophy, anyway."

Kurogane growled. "Fine, if that's your philosophy -- that's fine. But we're done here."

Fai lowered the bow, blinked at Kurogane. "Done for the night?"

"Done for good," Kurogane snapped. "If you're ready to train by _my_ philosophy, and learn things _my_ way, then I'll teach you. Otherwise, I won't."

Fai thought about this for a moment, and Kurogane waited, confident that his threat would bring Fai into line. But then Fai nodded cheerfully and agreed. "Okay," he said.

"What?" Kurogane yelped, stared at him. "But -- I thought learning demon-hunting was what you came out here to do! You're telling me that you're just giving up?"

"Oh, no," Fai assured him earnestly. "I'm not giving up. I'll just have to find some other way to learn from Kuro-teacher."

"Like what?"

"Well, if we find a demon, then you'll _have_ to fight it, won't you? And then I can learn from observing you, see what you do, and learn those moves from myself."

"Argh!" Kurogane resisted the urge to hit something. Like the mage. "You -- Look, there's no way in hell I'm going to get into a fight with _you_ watching my back, if you don't know what the hell you're doing!"

"Then you'll just have to keep teaching me, won't you?" Fai smiled at him innocently.

"Or I could just just _beat_ the lesson into you!"

  
\--------------------------------

 

They were approaching the limit of what Kurogane thought of as his regular patrol; not only the farthest point from the Nihon walls that he normally went, but also the part where the rolling wooded hills began to give way to more broken, barren, and rockier territory. They'd been climbing upwards for about a day, winding their way through a series of small canyons with scrub-like trees lining the rock lips. Kurogane's intention was to get to a lookout point he knew, where they could get a good view of the lands to the west and the north before turning around and making the descent.

On one particularly treacherous slope they'd both dismounted and were leading their horses, and, not for the first time that day, broken out into an argument. At least, Kurogane thought, _he_ was having an argument; Fai was just being ridiculous, as usual.

"So if you're not going to wear a helmet, what's the point of even wearing armor at all?" he was making the perfectly valid point. "You're leaving some of the most vulnerable parts of your body completely exposed -- you might as well just slap a bright red target on your head and be done with it."

"But I couldn't wear a helmet like Kuro-chan's," Fai said in a reasonable-sounding tone that was anything but. "How could I see anything that was around me on any side? I'd have no peripheral vision at all. I'd be half-blinded!"

"That's why you don't rely on your eyes alone!" Kurogane shot back. "You have to develop your senses so that you can _feel_ attacks coming, even from your blind side or from behind you. Once you've done that it doesn't matter how limited your field of vision is; and until you have, you'll be vulnerable from all directions anyway."

Fai hummed a little, "But if that's the case," he said, "if I'm going to use magic anyway, I'd rather just do what I have been doing and not wear a helmet."

"How many times do I have to tell you? It's _not_ magic!" Kurogane began heatedly, but Fai wasn't even looking at him. Instead, those ice blue eyes were scanning over the rocky edges above and around them.

"Speaking of things on all sides," Fai said brightly, "I think we have company, Kuro-chan."

Kurogane snapped his head around and looked up; sure enough, almost-but-not-quite hidden against the stony background, there was a scrape and a shudder as a human form retreated out of view. "Crap."

"Whatever shall we do?" Fai said softly, keeping his eyes on the skyline and not even looking down at Kurogane. "Perhaps these gentlemen want to talk with us?"

Kurogane considered. "This file opens up a little further on. If they want to put us in a bottleneck, they'll probably be waiting there," he predicted.

"We could turn around and go back down," Fai suggested.

"They'd just follow us."

"All right then," Fai said, amused. "We walk into the lion's den. And then what?"

Kurogane didn't bother to answer; he just reached back and adjusted Ginryuu in the scabbard.

True to Kurogane's guess, they turned the last bend in the rock wall to see a line of figures blocking the way. "Stop right there!" one of them called, and Kurogane did, rolling his shoulders to loosen the muscles while he sized up his opponents.

Five of them visible ahead, seven stationed on the rock walls behind and above them. All men, grubby and hollow-eyed, dressed in ill-fitting clothes and pieces of armor. Definitely bandits, and Kurogane shook his head in disgust. Some people were just too stupid to live. "Well?" he called back ungraciously. "What do you want?"

Fai laughed. "Always so rude, Kuro-chan!" he called out teasingly. "Here we are guests in their territory, and you can't even phrase yourself politely. Try 'What can we do for you gentlemen?' Just like that."

Some scattered, coarse laughter from the rocks around them, and Kurogane rolled his eyes. The bandit standing a little forward and higher than the rest -- almost certainly the leader -- laughed the loudest, like a braying mule, before he said, "What do you think we want? Pay us our toll."

"Not your road," Kurogane observed, and the leader grinned unpleasantly, showing the remains of a few very bad teeth.

"It is now. We ain't in the empire of Nihon any more, boys. We got tired of fighting other people's wars for a pittance, got tired of slaving away for those whores up in Edo. No more taxes, no more laws! We're starting our own empire, and if you're in our territory, you're gonna pay our toll!"

"You're insane." Kurogane's shoulders tensed, anger at the insult to Tomoyo beginning to tinge his vision red.

Fai leaned in, and asked in a tone of interest, "What are you going to do about the demons? How long do you think you'll last, out in the middle of demon territory like this? You've only made it this long because this place is so broken up and rocky, they can't catch a good scent."

"What do you think we are, children?" the leader scoffed; although Kurogane thought he saw some of the other men shift uneasily when demons were mentioned, and exchange nervous looks. "We don't believe in fairy stories! And if any some damn demons do show up, we're ready for them! We've got fifty warriors --"

"Like hell you do," Kurogane snorted. "You've got twelve men, no horses, and not a decent weapon among the lot of you."

"We'll have more before today is over. We'll even let you walk out of here alive." Given the smirk that accompanied that line, Kurogane was inclined to doubt that assurance. "All we want is your money, your horses, your gear, and --" the man leered and winked, a truly disgusting sight -- "your woman."

Next to him, Fai abruptly stopped laughing. "Hey!" It was Kurogane's turn to snicker at Fai's suddenly sour expression, and when the mage glared at him, it turned into an outright chortle.

"Why does everyone assume that?" Fai demanded of no one in particular, as Kurogane made an effort to . "Do I have breasts? Do I have a pretty hairstyle? Am I wearing a dress? No, I do not and I am not!"

"Enough talk," the bandit leader called out, suddenly serious and threatening. "Pay up."

"Yeah, I don't see that happening," Kurogane called back, and reached back for his sword.

"Hands off!" the leader called a warning, and there was a sudden scraping sound as the seven who'd been in concealment stood up; Kurogane glanced around him to see half a dozen bows and crossbows in various states of repair being aimed in his direction. "You're outnumbered and outgunned! One wrong move and you're a pincushion!"

"Well, Kuro-sama," Fai said in a low voice, tone still disgruntled, "what do we do now?"

"Kill them," Kurogane said, and his sword left the sheath.

He heard the shouts as he leapt forward, and the snap of bowstrings and the _clack_ of bolts ricocheting off of rock -- and at least one hard, heavy _tung_ as they struck his armor, and bounced back. His vision had gone to black and white again, focused on the figure of the bandit leader ahead of him; the world narrowed down to just him and his kill.

Another blow struck him, shaking his entire body and rocking his stride, but he shifted his weight outwards and kept going. The bandit barely had time to fall back two steps, mouth opening to shout, hand clawing for the weapon at his own belt, before Kurogane was on him, and Ginryuu came around in a broad sweep that took his head off his shoulders in one clean blow.

The body collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, and Kurogane whirled around, blood arcing out in a fierce spatter as he brought his sword to bear. Now he was able to take in the rest of the battlefield, and breathed in relief when he saw that neither of the horses had been hit. He would have been upset if they'd gotten hurt, but in a life or death situation there was no waiting on them.

It took him a little longer to locate Fai -- not a sprawled heap on the ground, not locked in one-on-one melee combat with any of the swarming dark figures on the sides of the ravine -- he finally located him by the bright flash of hair... up a tree on the far side of the ravine, twenty yards away.

"What the hell are you doing up there?" he called out, but Fai didn't respond. One of the bowmen had pulled his aim around, and fired a wild shot in Fai's direction; he dropped and swung out of its path in a smooth movement, one hand on the bole of the tree for balance. The bowman pulled another arrow for another shot; Kurogane was about to move in his direction, not at all sure he could get there in time, when something dark and fast came hissing down out of the tree, and struck the bowman in the neck. He crumpled in a heap, gurgling and clutching at the thing lodged in his throat; Kurogane's tantou.

"Gods damn it!" Kurogane roared. "How many times are we going to have this conversation about not _throwing your only weapon away?"_

"It's not my _only_ weapon, Kuro-chi!" Fai's voice floated down to him, and silhouetted against the sunlight he saw Fai brace himself against two branches, and in one smooth moment unsling something from around his chest -- the bow, Kurogane realized, and wondered when the hell he'd had time to get it off the horses.

Another heavy impact of a crossbow bolt warned him that he couldn't waste any more time standing around and staring. When he turned to face the source of it his left shoulder joint scraped to a stop mid-movement; the bolt had lodged in the joint, hindering his movement. "Ah, shit," he muttered, and turned his attention to the situation on the ravine floor once more.

Some of the bandits were panicking, scrambling to escape in all directions, but others had by now decided that trying to take him down with missiles was impossible, and were ganging up on him instead, wielding knives or clubs or even one cheap, rusted sword. A small smile played over Kurogane's face as he set his stance; the lot of them combined didn't weigh half of even what a small _oni_ did, and none of their weapons had a chance of getting through his guard. All they were accomplishing by this was putting themselves conveniently in reach of his sword.

It was over within minutes; Kurogane was barely even breathing hard when he finally lowered his sword and counted bodies. Five on the ravine floor, six counting the beheaded bandit leader; three more in still heaps on the ledge above. That left three to escape, and Kurogane growled in his throat as he caught sight of one of the bowmen from before, scrambling over the rocks a hundred yards up. Too sheer a face for him to climb; if he tried to get up there in this armor he was just as likely to bring the unstable face down on himself.

"Mind if I borrow that, Kuro-pi?" a voice said from right by his ear; Kurogane jumped and nearly skewered the mage, who'd dropped down on his left side. "The hell!"

"Thank you." Fai grabbed hold of the arrow lodged in his shoulder joint, and yanked; Kurogane stumbled as it pulled free. Fai had brought the bow down from the tree with him; he spun the arrow around and drew it carefully, adjusting for the mismatched length and style of the arrow, and let it fly.

The arrow wobbled mid-flight; instead of striking him in the center chest it landed in his lower back, right under the kidneys; the man screamed in agony and lost his grip on the rocks, rolling for a dozen feet before he hit free air and dropped; the scream ended with a very final _crunch_ when he hit the ground.

"Not bad," Kurogane allowed.

"Shoddy fletching," Fai disagreed. "No wonder it wouldn't fly straight. What can you expect from amateurs, I suppose?"

"Guess so," Kurogane said, and squinted up at the rocks; no sign of the surviving two bandits. Well, if twelve hadn't been a threat, two likely wouldn't be either -- unless, of course, they had a larger band hidden back in the caves somewhere. But he doubted it.

Looking around at the slaughterhouse the ravine had suddenly become, Kurogane lowered his guard with a sigh. "Well, let's clean up this mess."

\--------------------------------

"Did you enjoy that?" Fai asked, from the ledge above, where he was retrieving the tantou from the body of the ill-fated archer.

"Don't forget to check them for money. Not likely that any of their gear will be worth crap, but check for anything easy to carry," Kurogane called up to him, kicking over the body of the bandit leader and bending over to examine it; if any of them were likely to have anything worth taking, it would be him. "Yeah, it was a nice little exercise."

"Was it," Fai said, and something in his tone caused Kurogane to glance up.

"You aren't coming over feeling guilty, are you?" he asked. "They started it, you know. They would have killed us both for the clothes on our backs. They're nothing but parasites."

"Mm."

"Look at it this way," Kurogane said. "Forget that they were criminals; they were walking bait for the oni in this area. They'd lasted out here what, a few months? They wouldn't have lasted a year before they would have been caught and eaten, and then their souls would be taken for demon food. And if they'd ever gone back to Nihon, they would have been crucified as thieves and murderers. This is the best ending they could have come to, and it spared any other victims that they might have come across in the meantime."

"But they were still men," Fai said softly. He looked up to meet Kurogane's gaze, his piercing blue eyes unusually serious. "I thought you preferred demons. I thought you didn't like fighting humans."

"I don't," Kurogane said, and looked back at the man he'd beheaded, so effortlessly; at the other five he'd killed afterwards. "Because it's too easy." _Much too easy._

\--------------------------------

  
There was no food to be foraged, this high above the tree line, but they managed to scrounge up enough scrub brush for a fire, and Fai located a lone yearling duck, with a ring of darker spots around its neck and a crimp in one of its wings.

Kurogane eyed it with disfavor. "Let me guess," he said. "The duck's name is Bluefeathers or something like that, and he was supposed to have flown south months ago, but he injured his wing and was separated from his flock, and is now bravely trying to make the yearly migration on his own."

"Something like that," Fai agreed.

Kurogane stared at the duck. The duck fanned its feathers and cocked its head at him, giving a low honk.

"Want to eat him anyway?"

"Yeah."

\--------------------------------

"Hey, Kuro-chan?" Fai asked.

Kurogane grunted annoyance, but he had long since learned that if he refused to respond to the annoying nicknames, there'd never be any conversation. Which might not be so bad, really, except that when there was no conversation the stupid wizard felt the urge to _fill the silence_ with chatter and occasionally singing and all things considered it was really just easier not to stand on principle on the nicknames. "What?"

Fai stared into the fire, his chin rested on his folded arms. His expression was unusually pensive. "How do you think you want to die?" he asked.

"I don't."

Fai cast him an amused glance. "Everybody dies sometime, Kuro-chan."

"Yeah, probably. But I'm not going to be offered a say in it, so what's the point in being morbid?"

"But out of all the ways that you might possibly die, which do you think you would want, or at least, mind the least?"

Kurogane thought it over. "Old age, peacefully, in my sleep. In bed with someone's wife, preferably my own."

Fai vented an exasperated sigh, which gave Kurogane at least a small spike of satisfaction to share the headache. "Yes, but what if you couldn't choose that?"

"If I can't choose, then why are you even asking me?"

Fai threw a piece of firewood at him. "Kuro-chan, you are _such_ a pain."

" _I'm_ a pain?" Kurogane demanded, deflecting the missile. Now he was remembering why he hadn't wanted to respond to the nickname in the first place. Conversations with Fai always seemed to give him a headache. "Who was it who slowed us down for hours this morning by hiding my gear in a tree?"

Fai ignored him, turning back to the fire. "I would have thought you'd like to die in battle," he said. "Preferably defending someone you cared about."

That did strike a chord, and Kurogane frowned as he stared intently into the fire as well. "I'd hate that," he said after a moment. "That would be awful."

Fai blinked, and cast a startled glance in his direction. "Really? I thought that was something that mattered a lot to you. All heroism and glory and that sort of thing."

"Yeah, but..." Kurogane scowled. "If I died in battle fighting for something I wanted to protect... that would mean that I failed. And then whatever I'd been protecting would die too. That would be the worst, knowing as you died that you couldn't save them."

Fai frowned back at the fire. "But what if you knew that it was the act of you dying itself that would save them?"

Kurogane thought about his duty to protect Tomoyo, protect his people, and shook his head. "Things like that don't happen in the real world," Kurogane said. "So why waste time trying to think of such a contrived situation?"

Fai shot him an unreadable look, but thankfully, didn't argue the point.

After a moment, Kurogane added, "I guess I wouldn't mind too much dying in battle, if it was against a worthy, honorable opponent... and anyone I cared about were far away, at the time."

"So that they wouldn't get hurt?" Fai inquired.

"So that they wouldn't have to watch."

There was silence for a long time over the fire between them, broken, of course, by Fai. "Know how I'd want to die?" he said.

"I didn't ask."

"I'm thinking number one method would be drowning in a giant vat of beer. Good beer, by preference, but I'm not too picky."

"I did _not_ ask."

  
\--------------------------

  
They had both been asleep, for hours, or at least, the fire was banked and they'd been drawn into themselves and silent for hours, when Fai's quiet voice broke the silence. "I think I'd want to be killed by someone who cared for me," Fai said.

Kurogane roused from his light doze, and blinked in the darkness, rolling the words over in his head. He wasn't entirely sure he hadn't dreamed them, and yet, that was too bizarre for anything his sleeping mind could conjure up. Had to really be the mage. "That makes no sense whatsoever," he said at last.

A low laugh. "I didn't necessarily say it made sense, just that it's what I'd want. Who else could you trust to do it right, not to drag it out too long or hurt too much? We're with people who love us on the day that we're born; why should the last moments of our lives be any less intimate?"

Kurogane was a little more awake now; it was on the tip of his tongue to ask if Fai was joking, but he realized before he asked that he wasn't. "That's pretty damn selfish," he said. "If it was someone you cared for, why the hell would you put them through that? And if someone cared about you, why the hell would they kill you in the first place?"

"But you always get hurt the most by the people who care about you," Fai's voice came out of the darkness, soft and sad. "If we care about someone, we give them the power to hurt us, more deeply than any enemy could. Remember how it feels when someone you love leaves you, or dies. Would it have hurt so much if you didn't care? Doesn't it hurt worse than any burn you could get from fire, or any wound you could get in battle?"

Kurogane didn't answer for a long time, and for a change, neither did Fai. The wizard lay staring upwards, at the stars just barely glimmering visible beyond the branches. Fai said, "Maybe if --"

"Go to sleep," Kurogane growled, voice rough and ragged.

"But don't you think --"

"Shut up. Go to _sleep,_ " Kurogane said, and punctuated his point by kicking a pile of sand over the remains of the fire, plunging them into even deeper darkness. "Stop talking."

For once, the wizard did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By the way, these versions of Kurogane and Fai aren't completely serious, of course. Kurogane has his own playful side and actually quite enjoys jokes and comedy. And Fai, although he has a lot of problems with food, has NO problems with liquor! Left to himself, he'd only ever drink liquor and never eat.
> 
> But for various reasons these sides of them just never get a chance to show in this story. Kurogane doesn't play around when he's on duty or in danger, and pretty much all the time we see him in this story, he's either on duty, a hostage of war, or having a major conflict with his monarchs, none of which are situations he's able to relax and act casually. Fai, meanwhile, is not allowed to drink liquor when he's injured and taking medicines -- and pretty much all the time we see him, he's either out in the middle of nowhere where there is no liquor, or too badly injured to drink!
> 
> Also: Fai is a dirty liar.


	7. The Wide World, Part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which much is said about magic, a demon appears, and Kurogane receives an unpleasant wake-up call.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I kept having to resist the urge to describe Fai's weapon in the text as a longbow. It just rolls off the tongue a lot better than plain old 'bow,' and I do see it in enough fic that's out there to make it seem like a natural choice. But then I remind myself that a longbow is anywhere between six and seven feet tall, weighs over a hundred pounds, shoots arrows the length and weight of your arm, and is almost impossible to aim. It's more of a siege weapon than a precision weapon; the intent of the longbow unit is to release a volley of armor-puncturing shots together in a high parabolic arc so that the momentum as it comes down kills anything in a wide swath under it. Fai would not be using a weapon like that for these purposes and he certainly could not be carrying it on a horse.   
> On the other hand, the Japanese discipline of kyuudo was actually intended for horseback archery, which is why they draw their bows the way they do, down from overhead instead of back from the front. So we'll just say that Fai's weapon is a reinforced shortbow, which still packs plenty of punch and is much better at hitting small targets when fired in a straight line.
> 
> Also: Fai is still a damn dirty liar.

"Hey, wizard."

Fai looked up from where he was crouched over the bow, rewrapping the arrow plate, and smiled at him. "You know, for someone who complains so much that I get your name wrong, you never use mine, either."

Kurogane waved this away impatiently. "About that. I've been thinking. I wanted to ask you something."

"What did you want to ask?" he replied.

Kurogane hesitated, not quite sure how to phrase his question. "What d'you call... people like you? Men who use magic, I mean. I don't know much about magic in your country -- or any country. Do you have some special name in your own language, or is it just 'magic users' ?"

Fai's eyebrows went up, and his hands paused on the binding of the bow. "Is there some particular thing that's sparking this interest?" he said. "I thought you didn't care for magic."

" _I_ don't. But if it's going to be important, I figured I ought to know. You said..." Well, actually Fai _hadn't_ said as much, but he'd implied it, "that outside of Nihon, men train in magic instead of women."

Fai put down the bow. "Yes. In fact, Nihon is fairly unusual in that respect. In most places, most practitioners of magic are men."

"How do you know that?"

Fai smiled at him gently. "Kuro-chan, this _is_ my profession. It's my business to know. The library at Ceres has books from countries all over the place, far beyond the boundaries of the Nihon empire; some places that don't even exist any more. They all tended to have their own ways of practicing magic, though, so there's not just one word for male magic-users, no. It depends on what you specialize in."

This was not proving nearly as straightforward an answer as Kurogane had hoped. "Specialize? What does that mean?"

"Well..." Fai sat back, leaning on his hands and crossing his legs in a more comfortable posture under him. "What we call magic isn't as rare and specialized as most people seem to think. In a very general way of thinking about it, it's merely the energy that exists in the world, the energy of plants and animals and people as well as of stronger symbols such as runes and words. The question is not where to find it, or even who can see it, but how they choose to channel and shape it. Different cultures and different disciplines do it in different ways, and give it different names depending on what method you practice."

Kurogane figured he was following about half of this. He tried to get back on topic. "So... what's the method that Ceres people practice?"

He wasn't absolutely sure Fai would answer that question -- it bordered on giving away dangerous secrets -- but after a moment Fai merely said, "Well... leaving aside some kinds of specific talents that seem to be inborn, like precognition or healing, and looking only at the kinds of magic that anyone can train in and study... there are a few broad categories. Wizardry is one. Wizards use runes, or words, or symbols of power to construct a spell, which has a predetermined and specific effect. It's by far the most comprehensive and best-documented way of practicing magic, but it is limited to what you can do with the symbols themselves, and it can't be done without the proper tools and preparation."

That made some sense to Kurogane; it sounded a lot like the wards his mother had maintained. Although he'd stick his head in a bucket before he thought of his mother as a _wizard_. "So are there other kinds of magic, that don't take that kind of preparation?"

"Yes, a few. Sorcery is one of those. Sorcery deals with the control and channeling of elemental forces, like heat and cold, fire and water, or lightning; people who practice that are called sorcerers."

"Controlling fire, as in, magically creating fire?" Kurogane frowned -- this was impinging uncomfortably close to some personal things.

Fai smiled. "Mm, it's possible, although creating fire where there is none is a little different, and is a much bigger drain on the sorcerer's energy. I was thinking more in terms of controlling a fire that actually exists, making it bigger or smaller or directing it where you want to go. Depending on your skill -- and how much of your life energy you can spare, of course -- a sorcerer can also cause immediate physical effects like moving or stopping things, or putting up a barrier."

Kurogane was getting the feeling that he was going to be quizzed on all this, later. "A barrier. Like the wards?"

"That's a little different too. Those were built over time and sustain themselves through a physical object. I'm talking more about an immediate barrier that the sorcerer would create right in front of him, and it lasts only as long as he's concentrating on it, or until he runs out of power. There's also magery. That's a power that comes mostly from the mind; it allows the mage a certain sensitivity to magic, and between two mages of equivalent skill, silent or long-distance communication. The aptitude for that does seem to vary widely from person to person; training and skill can only get you so far, you either have the ability or you don't.

"Then there's also what we'd call natural magic, and there --" Fai was getting more and more enthusiastic on his subject, gesturing animatedly and with a vivid sparkle in his eyes. " -- this is where the boundaries of what we call magic start getting really fuzzy. Natural magic deals with plans and animals, and other creatures and systems of the natural world.

"On the more dramatic end, powerful shamans can do things like taking on the shapes of animals, or even controlling the weather; but natural magic also includes much simpler things like communicating with plants and animals. Or even herbalism, creating potions or spells with magical effect out of plants that exist perfectly naturally in every mountain meadow. Even cooking has an element of this kind of natural magic in it, taking raw ingredients that we can't eat and transforming them into something we can. Who can say where the boundary lies between mundane tasks, and magical ones? It's all the same energy, in the end."

Kurogane was getting a headache. He'd thought it was a simple question, and hadn't expected an academic lecture. "All right, enough. I get the idea, there're lots of different titles depending on what kind of magic. So back to the question I actually _asked_ you -- which one of these titles applies to _you?_ Wizard, mage, sorcerer, shaman, or what?"

There was a pause, and then Fai coughed apologetically; for a change, he actually looked embarrassed. "Well, all of them, technically."

"What?!"

"Well, I've studied all of those fields, and can practice them, to some extent. I'm stronger in some areas than others, of course, but I think it's fair to say I'm proficient in all of them."

Kurogane was absolutely convinced that the wizard was putting him on, teasing him somehow, even if he wasn't exactly sure of the punch line. "I don't believe it," he said abruptly.

"What part of it don't you believe?" Fai said, in a tone so patient that it had to be mockery.

"I don't believe that you could have trained in all those types of magic! Even if they _are_ real, and I'm not convinced of that, even if Ceres _does_ have them in its library, there's no way you could have learned about all of them well enough to do them in just a few years! You're way too young for that, even if you started studying as a kid."

Fai stared at him in what appeared to be genuine astonishment, and then broke into peals of laughter. "Too young? Kuro-chan, how old exactly do you think I _am?_ "

"You..." Kurogane found himself suddenly shaken by doubt; hastily, he revised his mental estimate of Fai's age up by a few years. "I don't know, twenty-one, maybe twenty-two? Even so..."

"The same age as you are? We could have been childhood friends together? Oh, my goodness." Fai took a breath, got a hold of his laughter. "Kuro-chan, I began the study of magic when I was seven years old, and I've been studying for more than three decades now."

" _What?"_ Kurogane stared in disbelief. "You're shitting me!"

Fai spread his empty hands in denial, smiling slightly. "Sorry," he said.

  
Kurogane refused to talk to him for the rest of the evening.

\--------------------------------

In the bright light of morning, Kurogane took a close, hard look at Fai. It was still hard to believe that this slight, smooth-faced boy with the easy laugh was in his middle age; there wasn't a wrinkle or blemish in sight. Something to do with all that magic? Probably in at least one of those kinds of magic there was the secret of eternal youth, or something even weirder than that. "So -- do you want me to believe you can do every kind of magic that exists?"

"No, no!" Fai assured him. "Not at all. There are some schools of magic that we don't know very much about, either because they're purely theoretical or because they're guarded secrets -- like conjuration, for instance. That's one of the biggest holes in our library at Ceres, it's very frustrating." Fai frowned, as if in remembered injustice.

  
Kurogane thought about this. "So what do you call someone who does 'conjuration?' "

That surprised a brief laugh from Fai. "Good question. I suppose you could call them warlocks -- or witches, for females -- but I don't really know, because so far we don't know anyone who _does_ that kind of magic."

"Even you?" Kurogane asked pointedly.

Fai shook his head. "When I said nobody knows much about it, I meant it. Conjuration refers to a largely theoretical branch of magic where you create portals -- doorways -- to another place, through which you can instantly transport an object, or yourself. It requires immense amounts of power and control, and the slightest mistake can be fatal."

The idea intrigued Kurogane -- instant teleportation between places had a lot of possibilities, both on the individual and the large scale. Transportation of assassins -- armies -- supply trains -- "That sounds handy," he remarked.

Fai looked at him askance. "Have you really thought it through? Creating such a portal involves ripping a hole in the fabric of the universe itself! If you're lucky, the other end of the portal will wind up somewhere in our world -- and _not_ in the heart of a volcano or the bottom of an ocean. If you're not lucky -- do you have any idea what exists outside of the boundaries of our world? What kind of creatures live out there?"

"No," Kurogane said, taken aback.

" _Neither do I_ ," Fai said. "Because nobody who's ever done that has come back to tell us."

"Oh."

Fai straightened his shoulders, having made his point. "Anyway, there are types of magic I don't do because they're too dangerous, like that one. And some schools I've studied but just don't have the talent for, like medicinal magic, and some schools I've studied but would really rather _not_ have to do, like necromancy."

  
"Necromancy?!" Kurogane stared at Fai in shock.

"Magic that deals with dead things, or talking with dead people, or --"

"I know what it means! I want to know what the hell you mean, you _don't like_ to do necromancy -- so does that mean that you _have_ tried it, at least enough to know that you _can_ do it?"

"I really prefer not to have to do it," Fai said mildly. "Dead people aren't very good conversationalists. Nothing like you, Kuro-pon!"

Kurogane decided he wasn't going to ask any more. Ever.

\--------------------------------

  
The rest of that day passed in strained silence, as Kurogane tried to work through the implications of all the information that had been thrown at him. Even after they banked the fire, the usual signal for Fai to shut up and go to sleep, Kurogane kept fidgeting and shifting around uncomfortably.

"Kuro-myu," Fai said from the other side of the fire, "you know, it really is quite silly for both of us to stay awake all night. Why don't we take shifts? Lack of sleep makes puppies cranky!"

"Don't call me that," Kurogane said, raising his head from his usual sleeping posture; sitting with one leg braced against the ground, chin tucked against his chest. "And I always sleep like this."

"Then that's probably why you're always cranky."

"Have you considered the possibility that _you're_ the reason why I'm always cranky?" Kurogane grumbled.

"Impossible!" Fai stated cheerily. "Anyway I don't see how you hope to get any rest, sitting up like that. Didn't I guard you perfectly well when you took that bath --"

"Which _I_ didn't intend to take --"

Fai smirked at him. "Come on, lie down and get some sleep. It'll be good for you, you'll be more on your game and ready to fight any demons that we find, okay?"

Against his better judgement, Kurogane spread out a blanket and rolled up in it. "If I find you asleep when I wake up later, we're going back to the old way," he said firmly.

"Night, Kuro-nyao!" Fai sing-songed. "I'll wake you up after midnight, or if I see any of the walking dead approach, okay? With the full moon and all."

"Very funny, mage," Kurogane snarled, and turned away from the fire.

He stayed wide-open awake for hours, though.

\--------------------------------

  
Halfway through the morning, Kurogane noticed Fai's chatter slow and stumble, and finally die. It wasn't that he missed the incessant noise, or in any way begrudged the silence; it was just unusual, that was all. And when he glanced back at Fai, behind him on the trail, he caught a grimace on the other man's face, so unlike his usual empty-headed smile.

"Oi," he finally asked, after the second of these. "Something wrong?"

Fai looked up at him, startled, and blinked. "What makes you think that?" he parried, trying to make his voice unconcerned.

"If you're sick or something, just say so. We can stop for an hour."

"No, it's... no, nothing like that," Fai assured him. But he still had the same crease between his eyebrows, the same small frown on his face.

Kurogane waited a moment, and then prompted, "Then what is it like?"

Fai sighed, and then nudged his horse a little further up the trail, until he was riding alongside Kurogane instead of directly behind. Kurogane was grateful that at least he didn't have to keep his head cranked over his shoulder to continue this conversation. He waited.

After several minutes, Fai said, "Yukito is calling me."

"Calling you?" Kurogane said, startled. "What -- like you call the animals?" Now that was just creepy.

"No," Fai laughed, although it sounded slightly strained. "Not exactly. This is a direct communication, aimed at me specifically. And it goes two ways. He's calling me, but I don't have to answer."

Kurogane waited for clarification, but Fai apparently considered this explanation enough in its own right. "Who's Yukito?" he prodded him.

Fai flashed him a considering glance, before saying after a moment, "Second senior wizard to the King of Ceres."

"Oh," Kurogane sat back in his saddle, startled by this news. "So he's kind of your boss, huh?"

Fai smirked at him. "We prefer not to think of ourselves in such hierarchical terms, but I guess you could say that."

"Does he know where you are?" Kurogane frowned. "Wait -- could he come and find us here?"

Fai laughed, although there was a dry note in it. "No. He could never leave Ceres to come after me. He's the focus of far too many boundary and scrying spells to be able to pass the borders of the kingdom."

"That's something, I guess." Kurogane brooded on this information. "So why is he trying so hard to talk to you, anyway?"

Fai shrugged slightly; he moved his horse a few steps ahead of Kurogane's, so that Kurogane was no longer able to directly see his face. "Probably, because the King is annoyed with me."

Kurogane drew in a breath, feeling a twinge of sympathy. Being in the doghouse with the ruler of one's country was never fun; his pride was still smarting from the dressing-down Amaterasu had given him before he left. But all the same... "Wait, why would he be annoyed with you? Didn't he send you on this mission in the first place?" But no, Fai had never _said_ that, had he? He'd only implied it.

Fai glanced back over his shoulder at Kurogane. "As a matter of fact, not as such, no."

Kurogane clenched his teeth. "So you ran off from your post, came out on your own? _Why?"_

"Well..." Fai hesitated, then sighed. "I thought that the demons were the more important threat. I still do. We have to learn to counter them before it's too late. The King doesn't think so, but I do. That's why I'm here." He nodded in calm resolution, as he turned to face forward again.

Kurogane rolled his eyes. "Great. So not only am I stuck out in the middle of the wilderness with a crazy wizard who won't even use magic, he's a _runaway_ wizard, too. Potentially with a league of other wizards wanting to hunt him down and bring him back. That's _definitely_ what I wanted to hear. All we need now is a couple of angry potential fathers-in-law howling for your head, and the scenario will be complete."

Fai tried to protest that image, but he was laughing too hard; he very nearly fell off his horse.

  
\--------------------------------

  
They'd been in the mountains for a week when a stream that they'd been following for days suddenly opened out into a broad pool. Gravel-bottomed, the water flowed gentle and mostly clear through the shallow gulch until it poured over a rock overhang a hundred feet away. It was about a yard deep at its deepest point, and they could both see the shadows of fish moving in the gentle current.

Kurogane's mind immediately began contemplating the possibilities of those fish, but Fai exclaimed, "A _bath_!"

"A bath? Out here?" Kurogane demanded. "Are you crazy, wizard?"

"What, you don't like baths?" Fai made a pretend-disgusted face. "No wonder Kuro-chan is so stinky all the time."

Kurogane growled, stung by the insult to his hygiene. "Don't be obnoxious. Of course I bathe -- when I'm home, in a city, where it's safe. Do you have any idea how stupid it would be to take off all my armor and splash around in the water for half an hour? If any oni showed up, I'd be fish bait."

"Well, maybe," Fai conceded magnanimously, "that's the case when you're by yourself. But there are two of us now! If you're really that worried, we can take turns, one of us standing guard all the time. If anything showed up, one could hold it off while the other one got his weapons and armor back on."

Kurogane made a disparaging noise. "If anything showed up, I could hold it off, yes. I'm not so sure about you."

"I'm hurt. I'm _wounded_. Kuro-chan doesn't have any _faith_ in me. He's so cruel, so mean." Fai sniffed dramatically, and big crocodile tears welled up in his eyes, but by this time Kurogane was used to this, and was no more moved by his displays of fake hurt than by his fake smiles.

"Uh huh. I've known you for less than a month, wizard, and while you may say you've killed a oni, _I_ didn't see it happen. Once we get in a fight together and I see how well you hold your own, then maybe I'll change my mind."

"Fair enough," Fai said good-naturedly, the fake tears disappearing as fast as they'd come. "But I have faith in _you_ , so even if you don't want to take a bath, I still will. And you'll stand lookout just like a good guard dog."

"I'm not a dog!" Kurogane objected, but it was too late. Fai had already sat down on the riverbank and was unlacing his boots. Kurogane rolled his eyes, and dropped his pack on the gravel bar. Obviously, they weren't going to get out of here anytime soon.

Although the days were getting shorter and the weather bleaker, the woods were airy and open right now; the trees, mostly oaks, had shed many of their leaves, and those that remained were a bright yellow that seemed to catch and magnify the weak sunlight. It wasn't exactly warm, however, and Kurogane eyed the water with a certain amount of distaste. "Won't that be that cold as hell?" he asked with a shudder.

"Not really," Fai replied sunnily. "You should come in and try it!"

"I thought I was supposed to be standing guard?" Kurogane shot back. Fai laughed, and splashed the water, although it didn't travel far enough to get more than a drop or so onto him. Kurogane rolled his eyes, and settled back on the sandbar, all hope of a quick and efficient swim quickly fading.

The last piece of Fai's clothing landed in a heap beside his armor, and Kurogane, who had been curious about this for quite some time, reached out and picked up one of the pieces, turning it over in his hands. It _was_ light, much lighter than Kurogane's own, but he could feel the difference in hardness just by holding it, and had little doubt that it could stand up to a blow.

There was that odd bluish cast to it, an almost oily sheen; it almost reminded him of the steel heart of Ginryuu, if you could make a suit of armor the same way you could make a greatsword. It felt slightly warm to the touch, and Kurogane wondered if that was just the leftover body heat, or the remnants of some enchantment. For a moment, he felt intensely jealous of Ceres' metalworkers, if they could give everyone a suit of armor like this.

He looked up, mouth open to comment on the craftsmanship; and it stayed open, then, as his train of thought was derailed by the vision in front of him.

Fai was naked, thigh-deep in the water, and that was in a strange way shocking enough. On some unconscious level, ever since their first encounter, Kurogane had thought of Fai as some weird kind of male-female hybrid; the pretty face, the long robes, and more than anything the _magic_ just triggered female associations for him that were too strong to break, and he'd found himself unconsciously protecting Fai as though he _were_ a woman. Now he was confronted with the very undeniable fact of Fai's maleness, it floored him, having the last of those assumptions blown away.

But that wasn't what took up most of his attention. The rest of Fai's skin was as pale as his face and hands had been; more so, if anything, because Fai _somehow_ had managed to develop a slight sunburn in even this weak autumn sun. The hair on his legs and arms and back was so pale and fine as to be nearly invisible, and that just made the black lines of the tattoo stand out more, a broad and intricate design that covered his entire back, curving lines over the tops of his shoulders, down over his chest and his arms.

It was beautiful, and not just the aesthetics of the design, or the stark crisp contrast of black ink on white skin. It was beautiful on Fai's skin in a way it never could have been on a flat sheet of paper, curving gently around his body, moving and shifting as he breathed, flowing like water over muscles and bones as Fai shifted and flexed. There was a grace to the way he moved that reminded Kurogane of a deer, or a swan; not brute strength, but balance and elegance and a wholly natural assurance of movement.

It was endless moments before he could tear his attention away from the tattoo, and looked up to see a bright blue gaze narrowly intersecting his own. He realized too late that he'd been obviously staring, and quickly said, "Your tattoo. I don't remember seeing that before. Where'd it come from?"

Fai twisted around, glancing over his shoulder at the stylized design. "Why," he said, "how did you know I didn't used to have it? When did you see me naked before now to be sure? Have you been _peeping?"_ He flashed Kurogane a sly grin, cocking his head coyly to the side.

Kurogane scowled, exercising all his discipline not to blush. "In case you had forgotten," he said, "first time I saw you, your shirt had been pretty much cut in half by an oni, and you almost were too at the same time. I got a good look at that cut, and definitely would have remembered seeing that marking there."

"Kuro-wan has such a good memory," Fai observed, but he wasn't meeting Kurogane's eyes.

"So, where'd it come from?" Kurogane persisted.

Fai didn't respond for a moment, attention on the splashing water, but he finally answered, "Well, you're right. I actually got it in my home country, before I came to look for you. And it isn't a permanent tattoo. It's a _geas_."

"A what?"

"A _geas_ , a magical prohibition. They're usually invoked for a certain task, and once that task has been fulfilled, they disappear." Fai looked over at Kurogane, and smirked. "You see, if I was going to come and learn demon-hunting from Kuro-ko, I thought it wouldn't be quite right if I could do things he couldn't. So this marking restricts my magic, so I can't cast most spells. That way I have to learn from you, and do things the way you do them, instead of just using magic all the time."

Kurogane blinked, and narrowed his eyes. "But you still are doing some spells," he objected. "And, cutting off your magic so that you can learn fighting? Isn't that awfully extreme?" This news gave him extremely mixed feelings; while he thoroughly agreed with the idea that Fai should learn to do useful things the real way, demon hunting was the sort of thing you had to approach all-out, and placing artificial restrictions to make it harder smacked of treating it like a game, not taking it seriously.

"It's only a restriction; it doesn't cut off my magic completely. If things get too dangerous I can still do magic in a pinch. Anyway, it's only temporary. I'm an apprentice, remember?"

"Hm." Kurogane frowned. Something about Fai's easy assurances didn't quite add up, but he doubted he'd get much further by pushing him when he wasn't sure what the right questions were to ask.

"Never mind that now," Fai said, from much closer than Kurogane had expected; he started, and looked up just in time to catch a wave of water full in the face. "Your turn for a bath!"

He sputtered, trying to clear his eyes so that he could grab the wizard and wring his arrogant neck, but Fai just danced out of his reach and laughed. "Now, come on, you might as well," he chided him. "You're already wet, so if you don't take off your armor to dry, who knows what will happen? It might rust! And besides, there's nothing worse than the smell of wet dog!"

It was a good thing he'd dispelled any stupid notions about needing to feel protective about Fai, Kurogane decided, because he was going to _kill him._

\----------------

Kurogane's bath ended up being much shorter than Fai's had been, since he didn't waste time mucking around, and being out of his armor still made the hair stand up on the back of his neck. Or maybe that was the way Fai stared intently at him the whole time he was bathing, but under the circumstances, Kurogane couldn't really complain without looking like a howling hypocrite.

\--------------------------------

They came to the top of the ridge early the next day, and Kurogane was able to get his look over the landscape at last; the light was behind them, looking to the north and to the east, rapidly burning off the last of the morning mist.

The forested hills below them were a patchwork of dull colors; dark green conifers mixed further down with the bare black of denuded trees; further on there was still the yellow and brown of autumn leaves clinging to the trees. Miles away, to the north, was the curve of the wall that marked the boundary between Nihon and the wilderness; and far to the north, but still crisp and clear into the distance, the snow-frosted mountain range that was Fai's home.

He looked over to see the wizard, eyes half-lidded and expression intense, staring off into the distance. "Hey, Kuro-sama?" the mage asked quietly.

That was one of the plainer pet names, which Fai used when he was being unusually serious -- although never serious enough to use Kurogane's _real_ name -- or when his attention was being taken up by other things. It dismayed Kurogane that he was learning all the variations on this annoying habit. "What?" he said, maybe a little too sharply.

Fai didn't seem to notice, though; he pointed out towards the north and the east, at a tangent to the direction that they'd come. "Do you see that hollow, about five miles away, between where that saddle runs into the river?"

Kurogane looked at the spot in question. "I see it... what about it?"

"Do you see fog there?"

A chill went down Kurogane's spine, and he stared hard at the hollow, then transferred his gaze to the mage. "No," he said. "No, there's no fog there."

A smile curved Fai's lips that had very little to do with humor, but a lot to do with hunting. "Then I think we've found our prey," he said.

\--------------------------------

Descending the north face of the ridge was harder than getting up to the lookout point had been; there were no paths on this side at all, and while the high-branched conifers made the woods look open and airy, the openness was deceptive. They had to lead the horses, wending their way among clusters of trunks and deadfalls, over sheer drops and down steep faces whose apparently solid surfaces gave way in showers of gravel and dead needles. By the time they'd gotten back to level ground again they were both scratched and bruised. And wary.

"Can you tell me anything about what class of oni we're facing?" Kurogane asked in a low voice, checking the draw of Ginryuu in its scabbard for the fourth time. He'd done his best to describe to Fai the different kinds of oni that he had faced over the years, and the different dangers that each kind presented, but he'd never been terribly good with words and it didn't mean as much until facing the thing itself.

"I've got no idea," Fai retorted, voice somewhat strained. "I can't see it at all -- that's the whole point of the magical concealment, isn't it? All I know is that it's there."

"Mm." But Kurogane was beginning to be able to sense it, the closer they got -- an uneasy feeling, an insidious taint on his mind. He kept his senses open and wary, scanning their surroundings for anything out of place.

All the same it was actually Fai who found the first traces -- or rather, Fai's horse, shying suddenly and sidling to the side, "Bella!" Fai exclaimed, putting a hand on her neck. "What is it, lady?"

Kurogane nudged his own horse closer, leaned over to look. The hooves had nearly trodden on a human skeleton, lying in some disarray in a scattering of torn clothing. The bones were white and bare, but fresh; it was hard to tell, but he didn't think the skeleton was complete. "Here's the first one," he said aloud. "This is a recent kill."

"Who was that?" Fai sounded half-sick, half-fascinated, staring at the bones. "Do you think -- any connection to those bandits we fought, in the higher reaches?"

"No way to tell now," Kurogane shrugged, and pushed his horse onwards. There was a look in Fai's eyes like he wanted to disagree with that, wanted to do something more, but he chose to follow Kurogane wordlessly.

They passed a few other skeletons, including one that Kurogane identified (but did not name to Fai) as female; and a burnt-out clearing with a charred and tumbled heap of leather in one corner that had probably been a tent. The oni was no longer there, but he thought he could feel it not too far away.

"It's close," Fai said, and he nodded in agreement. "The fog is thick, now."

"We'll leave the horses here," Kurogane said, and he dismounted with a small grunt, glanced around for something to fix his reins to. He didn't take his horse into battle; not only was the Suwa style of swordsmanship not suited for it, but it was a sure way to lose a horse, and he didn't particularly feel like walking back to Edo.

Fai blinked at him in some surprise, tilted his head in inquiry. "Why?" he said. "I thought you said the demons only drink human blood, and aren't interested in animals."

"They aren't," Kurogane responded sharply. "But the big ones can cut a horse in half with one blow, and they will, to dismount you. And you can't armor a horse the same way you can armor a person."

"That's true." Fai bent his head down towards his mount's head, a hand resting between her ears. The horse stamped, and whinnied, a strangely defiant sound. Fai straightened up and smiled at Kurogane. "Bella says she's willing to take the risk."

Kurogane eyed him warily, then shook his head. He wasn't going to argue with a _horse._ "Fine." He resigned himself to having to ride double with the mage, when his horse got killed. And tried not to look forward too much to that possibility.

They continued on, and soon neither of them would have needed special senses to find their quarry; they could _hear_ it, crashing through the undergrowth -- and from the echoing sound of breaking wood, the forest itself -- floated between the trees to their ears. They came out suddenly into a clearing on either side of the bank of a broad, shallow river, and stopped.

"Here," Kurogane said, and unsheathed his sword at last, finding solid footing as he took a battle stance. "We'll fight it here."

Fai looked faintly confused. "Don't we have to find it first?" he asked, his horse sidestepping uneasily away from him.

"No." A sharp smile curled up one side of Kurogane's mouth, and he raised his head to stare into the shadows on the other side of the river. "It'll come to us."

The oni burst out of the patch of shadows on the far bank, and one small pine toppled to the side as it bulled through. It roared, the noise shaking the treetops, and Kurogane took the few seconds before it closed the distance to size it up. Only one, this time, but it was a large one, its head towering some ten meters in the air. It went on four massive legs, covered with filthy, matted gray fur; but its top half reared above the four massive legs with a torso and arms almost like a man's, if any man had a spider's face, two sets of mandibles around a chittering mouth under (Kurogane counted six) round, glowing yellow eyes. He searched for -- but did not see -- the telltale bulge on the monster's chest and throat; not a host, then. He breathed relief for that fact; he never had gotten Fai to wear a helmet.

It roared again, the mandibles splitting its mouth wide, and then charged, sending the river fountaining in waves around it. "Crap," Kurogane muttered as he did a rapid recalculation; no way he could take that charge standing. Instead, he waited until the monster was almost on him, massive three-toed fists swinging down at him, before he moved. He slashed with Ginryuu as he lunged, and the blade sliced through filthy fur and skin; some black blood beaded and flew off, but it was only a superficial cut. Armoring under the skin this time, no doubt, and he mouthed another curse as the monster spun to follow him, much faster than he would have guessed from its size.

An arrow came hissing from the monster's right side, and struck the side of the monster's face beside the mandibles; then a second one, further back on the head towards the neck. The oni roared in fury and swiped a massive paw at the missile, but Kurogane could tell from the angle and the length of shafts still protruding that they had been no more than superficial hits, no more damage than his attack with Ginryuu had done.

Kurogane took advantage of the monster's distraction to press forward, lending all his strength to slashing blows on the oni's flank. He caught a glimpse past the monster of Fai, still on the horse, cantering furiously to maintain the distance while he handled the bow and drew another arrow. For the first time Kurogane could appreciate Fai's weird communication with his mount; without reins or a halter it meant that he could use both hands to draw and fire the bow, and still be able to keep his seat on the horse and control her with his legs alone.

He saw an opening, and changed the angle of attack; grinned as he felt a blow connect at all, saw Ginryuu sink deeply into the bulking muscles of the beast's flank, severing a tendon. It wouldn't be so fast to turn now, he thought, as he yanked his sword free in a spray of blood.

A chittering noise sounded from right above him, and he looked up -- right into the hideously deformed face of a rat-like creature, yellow eyes glowing, less than a foot from his face. He didn't have time to dodge as it launched itself at him; he flung up his left hand to block it, and the thing latched onto his arm, four limbs clawing and raking at the plate with unbelievable strength. The thing was the size of a large dog, and Kurogane's breath hissed in as three more pairs of glowing yellow eyes focused on him, from where they'd been roosting on the oni's humped back.

He retreated, still struggling with the first rat-like monster; it looked a little like one of the vermin, but holy _crap_ he'd never seen one this big, or this strong, or with almost hand-like paws clawing against the catches of his armor. It was pulling him off-balance, hampering his ability to swing -- or to reach for his second weapon, not that he could have brought Souhi to bear at such a close distance anyway.

The second rat-thing leaped from the monster's back and landed on his shoulder. It began raining blows on his head, which couldn't break through the heavy plate of his helmet, but set his ears ringing and his vision dizzy with the force of them nonetheless. The bigger oni was turning to face him again, braying in triumph; slower to move and with its right leg dragging, all right, but nothing impeding the speed or crushing strength of its arms.

Another hissing sound, from somewhere he couldn't see; a jolting impact to his head, and then with a hideous squeal the rat-thing released its grip on his neck and fell writhing on the ground, an arrow lodged in its back. The wizard must have circled around, to get a clear shot him without the monster in the way. A second arrow knocked off the one clinging to his left arm, and he was finally able to shift his stance and bring Ginryuu to bear. No more fucking around; he inhaled deeply and focused his ki, centering on his sword arm, and out beyond the reach of his hand.

" _Senryuu hikougeki!_ " he roared, letting the blast whip outwards, following the point of the sword; the howling blast of energy ripped into the monster, making a dent against the armoring at last. The oni actually staggered back, letting out an earsplitting bellow of pain and outrage at the attack.

"Oh, nice recovery, Kuro-pyon!" a light, breathless voice called from behind him.

"Shut up and fight!" he snarled, not taking his eyes off the main opponent. Three of the rat-things were crumpled corpses around his feet; where was the fourth one? He heard the same unearthly squeal from behind him, and the distressed scream of a horse, but there was no time to turn and look; he just had to hope that Fai could deal with it himself. He narrowed his eyes at the shambling monster in front of him, his breath coming hard and quick, searching for weak points. Where -- where, on this monstrosity, would its armoring be weak, its vitals be exposed...?

His earlier attack had torn the oni up the left side, the torso and the head; one of its eyes was cut out, leaking black fluid, but it seemed to be able to turn its head and adjust for that. Not a direct passage into the brain, not there. The chest and throat were exposed in this up-rearing position, but so massively armored that he didn't think even a dragon blow could cut through it. The other tendons -- perhaps...?

Another arrow came humming over his head and struck the oni in the neck, then burst into flames. Kurogane snarled in frustration -- that was still _not_ the right technique -- but he couldn't fault its effectiveness. The oni howled, massive arms sweeping up to try to claw at the blue fire spreading over the filthy fur of its head. It reared upwards, the front two legs leaving the ground in a ponderous heave.

Kurogane saw his opening and attacked in the same instant. The oni's lower chest, underbelly and innards were exposed in that moment; he darted forwards, for a moment actually _under_ the rearing legs. He had to duck a bit to get in position, but not much; and then he planted his feet, threw his head back, and called out " _Tenma-ku ryusen!_ " as he directed the blast upwards into the softer underbelly.

Fire exploded, _in_ the massive hollow cage created by the oni's ribcage and plating, and Kurogane was knocked flat to the ground by the backblow. Dazed, he barely had the presence of mind to roll to the side and then scramble on his hands and knees, as the flaming ton-heavy hulk collapsed nearly on top of him. He didn't quite make it; one of the heavy limbs landed across his back, and for a moment he lay stunned, half-blinded by the stench of charred fur and demonic flesh swirling around him.

Hoofbeats on the gravel strand in front of him jerked him back to his senses; he gripped Ginryuu in a panic, not that he had the leverage to swing from this position. But it was only Fai, the magician as winded as Kurogane had ever seen him, sweat dripping down his forehead as he panted for breath. He was grinning like a lunatic, though, as he slid off of his horse's side and reached down to give Kurogane a hand out from under the oni's corpse.

"Not bad," Fai panted, once he'd wrestled Kurogane free and the demon hunter was on his feet, "except for the encore there, I'd hate to see poor Kuro-pyuu buried under half a story of roasted demon. Didn't anyone ever tell you not to blow up a house you're standing under?"

Now Kurogane had a chance to look over the battlefield; he located the fourth ratling's corpse, slashed and trampled, halfway down the gravel strand. The horse had a long scratch down its side that was bleeding sluggishly, but seemed otherwise unharmed, and Fai was still carrying the black-stained tantou in his left hand.

"Not bad yourself," Kurogane returned, then coughed cinders out of his throat. "At least this time, you knew better than to throw your damn weapon away."

Fai shrugged a little, and grinned even wider. "Well," he said, turning to face the still-burning corpse, "shall we head away from here and find a place to rest and clean up? Or shall we make camp right here tonight? Here we have campfire and dinner, all in one."

Kurogane groaned.

  
\--------------------------------

  
They did find another place to camp, after all, on a mud flat several miles upstream from the demon hulk. The proximity of the river meant that they had a chance to take turns washing, which delighted Fai, although Kurogane rather thought that he needed it more. _Fai_ hadn't had a burning oni explode in his face, after all.

Fai chattered excitedly as they made camp, bouncing around like a cricket -- Kurogane guessed he was still wound up from his first oni kill and not sure how to channel the nervous energy. So much for the maturity of age, ha, not that he'd ever really been able to think of Fai as older or wiser in any way. Neither of them suggested weapons practice -- somewhat redundant at this point -- and they both feasted on leftover food from last night's dinner and travel rations without complaint.

"Hey... Fai," Kurogane said at last, allowing himself the brief luxury of using the mage's full name. Fai looked up at him, blue eyes wide in surprise.

"You weren't half bad back there," he said, gruffness in his voice belying the real emotion. "You could probably train up into a real demon-hunter."

Fai smiled, sensing the compliment behind his words. "You really think so?"

"Yeah," Kurogane said. "I... wouldn't mind having you at my back again." He stood there for a moment more, feeling awkward; he wasn't used to giving praise. He finished it up by giving Fai a firm nod, emphasizing his words.

"Thanks, Kuro-chan." Fai was still smiling, and his voice was cheerful; Kurogane couldn't understand why his eyes looked somehow... sad.

Maybe he wasn't looking forward to them parting ways ahead; with the oni defeated, and the patrol circuit nearly completed, Kurogane would be returning to the Edo capital soon, and Fai... back north, where his king and the other wizards were waiting to vent their displeasure. Maybe. Kurogane didn't pretend to understand what was going on in the mage's mind, any more than he pretended to know anything about Ceres magical politics.

Abruptly, he stood, shoveling a layer of ash over the fire to bank it down to coals. "I'm going to sleep," he said. "You take first watch."

"Okay," Fai said agreeably. Kurogane half expected him to follow up with teasing about Kurogane going to bed so early, about how quickly he tired out and had no stamina -- oh, gods, he'd been hanging around with the mage for too long if he was having stupid arguments with him in his head without the other man even _saying_ anything.

He shook his head to clear it of fatigue and wizards alike, and turned to roll himself up in a blanket and sleep. Whatever was bothering Fai, he'd deal with it in the morning.

"Good night... Kurogane," Fai said, and the strangeness of hearing his proper name from the wizard almost pulled him back from the brink of sleep.

  
\--------------------------------

  
It was near midnight; the moon was reaching its zenith overhead, the half-circle casting a faint pale light over the woods. Fai was still sitting in front of the banked fire, enjoying the heat of the glowing coals on his face. It was funny; back in the high passes of Ceres a night like this would be frozen solid, or howling with subzero winds; but even this late-autumn chill felt cold, against his back. He'd spent too much time out here, in the lowlands, away from his country.

Kurogane was still sleeping, the sound of his breaths -- not exactly snores, just deep rasping breaths in a slow, distinctive pattern -- assured Fai that he was truly asleep. He'd learned, over the past few weeks, the difference between Kurogane lying still and alert and tense and Kurogane truly asleep; the same way he'd learned the difference between Kurogane quiet because he was thinking and Kurogane quiet because he was sleepy, Kurogane irritable because he was hungry or Kurogane annoyed because of something Fai said or did, Kurogane growling out of embarrassment or irritation and Kurogane truly angry. He'd studied all the variations of expression, of mood.

He wondered if it would annoy Kurogane to know just how easy it was to read him, when he thought he was doing such a good job of hiding his feelings, his reactions. The demon-hunter spent far too much time by himself to know how to lie effectively to other people. But then, Kurogane was disturbingly good at reading his own reactions, too, when he thought he was hiding them so well. The strange looks that Kurogane had given him by the campfire that evening had proven that. He was a sharp observer, a quick study; it was hard to hide things from him for too long. Fai smiled to himself, a melancholy little smile. But the other man hadn't asked, hadn't pushed him; didn't like to meddle when it was none of his business.

Fai leaned over and reached into his gear, pulled out Kurogane's war knife. Almost the first thing Kurogane had ever given him, from their first meeting; it had saved his life half a dozen times since. He drew it, slowly to mask any noise, and studied the blade in the firelight. How very like Kurogane it was; plain and unornamented, but elegant and deadly, beautiful for its very purity of function. How beautiful. It hummed in faint resonance, even now, with the owner to whom it had been attuned.

Fai brought the blade of the knife up to his face, pressed his lips against it briefly. Closed his eyes, then opened them again with a sigh. There was not much use in denying to himself, at this point, that he was in love with Kurogane; and a more hopeless emotion he'd never known, considering who they both were. Considering what he had to do. The past few weeks had been like a dream, a fantasy where there was no one else in the world but each other.

 _But... the dream must end._

He stood up, quietly in the dark of night, walked over to where Kurogane lay sleeping, truly sleeping. He was a bulky shape in the dim light, black-painted armor swallowing the firelight; but Fai knew from observation that there was one spot where the helmet joined the neck that was only lightly armored.

"I'm sorry, Kurogane," he whispered, and brought the knife down, hard.

  



	8. The Distant Drums

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the weather turns colder, and Tomoyo and Kendappa draw plans for the conquest of Ceres.

_"A new mission, my lord?" Fai asked, suppressing eagerness, as the door swung closed behind Yukito._

"Yes," Ashura said, turning away from Fai, his eyes tracing the lines on the map; the borders of Ceres, borders of Nihon, the tracts of unmapped wilderness beyond. "I am sorry to send you out again so soon, when you are not fully healed from your injuries --"

Fai shook his head. That never mattered to him.

Ashura gave him an approving smile, and he glowed. "In one week, I want to you leave Ceres, travel south, as before. I want you to find this demon hunter of yours, wherever in the wilderness he may be. And I need you to kill him."

Breath caught in Fai's lungs; blood turned to ice in Fai's veins. It was a long moment before he could choke out, "But... why, sire?"

"Why?" Ashura's eyebrows went up in astonishment. "Is it not obvious? He is a powerful weapon, far too powerful to be allowed to exist in the hands of Nihon. He would surely be used against us in the coming war. We must eliminate the threat he offers. You are known to him, he will not consider you a threat; it will be no matter for you to get close enough to strike the killing blow."

"But..." Fai's stomach churned; he clutched the edge of the table, and prayed he was not about to lose the Princess's lovingly crafted dinner. He swallowed hard. "But -- my lord -- this is not necessary, this is not wise, surely --?"

Ashura's eyes leveled on him, his expression turning cold, disapproving; "Do you presume to tell me what is and is not wise, Fai?"

"No, sire, no!" Fai shook his head vigorously, switched tactics. "But surely the demons are, or will be, a greater threat to us than any single warrior of Nihon could be? To -- to destroy the ones who destroy them -- that would only be increasing our danger, in the long run."

"Perhaps..." The king's face eased, fractionally; he turned back to study the maps, running one finger over his lips. "And yet... that is tomorrow, but there is also today; there are many different ends that must be served, each in their season. For the present time, the demons are a much greater threat to Nihon than they are to us. We do not even know for certain that they would ever venture this far to the north. Nihon, not us, suffers the most from these demon's depredations.

"Yes, if we can increase the demon threat to the south -- by removing those who oppose the demons -- then we can divide their resources, force them to send troops and armaments there. In war, do we not burn the enemy's villages and fields, collapse their mines and tunnels, depriving them of the resources they use to oppose us? Crops can be re-planted, weapons re-forged... but these demon hunters, if they are as powerful and as few as you suggest, they would be a difficult resource to replace indeed."

Fai closed his eyes, took a steady breath. If he had to beg, he would beg; he had no pride left, not in front of Ashura. "Sire, _please_ ," he said. "Please reconsider. I do not wish to do this thing. I do not. He -- he is a good man, he saved my life --"

The king's attention switched back to him, his voice grew icy with censure. "And does your loyalty to him for this service outweigh your loyalty to me? To this country? Had you forgotten the promise you made, to defend this country in times of need, to protect it from the danger that will destroy it? You swore an oath, once, that you would do whatever was necessary -- whatever _was necessary -- to defend Ceres, to serve me. Or will you rescind that oath, for the sake of one man, one enemy?"_

Like a heavy weight around him, heavy water, drowning him. Fai struggled against it, but lost; could barely find the air to say in a cracked whisper, "No, sire."

The king relented; the pressure eased. "Good," he said, and the word fell like a hammer blow on Fai's hurting heart. "Your kindness will always be your weakness, Fai; it does you credit, but it is a vulnerability you must guard against. In war -- in a war for our very survival, against the threat of annihilation -- there is no room for such weaknesses."

"Yes, sire," Fai whispered, his eyes still locked on his hands, locked on the tabletop.

He could still feel the king's gaze on him, weighing, searching. "Do you have any tokens, of this man?" he asked.

Fai nodded, once. "He gave me a knife of his, sire."

"Very well. I will place a geas _on you, for the duration of this task, attuned to the demon hunter through his weapon. It will aid you in your task, so that you will always be able to find him, in any wilderness. And when the task has been completed, I will know, and you may return to me."_

\--------------------------------

  
The whisper of sound, the sudden movement over his head snapped Kurogane out of his sleep; but he was too slow to move, too slow to grab or draw his weapons, before the blade descended. He felt the knife point connect, at the weak junction of armor between neck and shoulder, and he also felt the sudden resistance, saw the sparks of white light flying as the blade ground against some unseen barrier. And then he was able to roll away, able to scramble to his feet and draw Souhi, taking up a guard stance even as his mind reeled in shocked numbness. "What the hell are you doing, you moron?" he screamed. "Is this some kind of joke?!"

Fai was facing him, knife in hand, and his posture was anything but playful. In the brief standoff between them, he raised his empty hand, two fingers together, and drew a glowing shape on the air that Kurogane did not recognize. Kurogane felt a sudden throbbing warmth on his forehead, on his hand; then in a sudden burst of pain he felt the mark on his forehead and the ring under the gauntlet snap into twisted metal, needle-sharp spikes of pain against his hand every time he moved. He spat a curse. _The wards. Tomoyo's wards!_ That must have been what protected him, from that first blow -- but they wouldn't protect him from the second.

Fai leapt forward again, knife out and ready; for a moment they clashed and struggled, Kurogane parrying the short blade with his own sword. The hilts locked together, Fai trying to force the blade up over Kurogane's hilt into the unprotected space in his faceguard. Then Kurogane planted his feet and threw Fai backwards, turning as he did so to disengage; and Souhi sped around in a whistling backhand cut to follow through. He didn't pull the blow; in life-or-death combat, there could be no hesitation. You went all-out, every time, or you were dead.

Fai moved one forearm, lightning quick, to block the stroke, and Kurogane jolted to a halt. He stared in disbelief. With that blow, he ought to have cut Fai's arm and hand clean off, and continued on to cleave his toso in half. At the very least, if the armor had withstood Souhi's cutting edge, the sheer force of the blow ought to have knocked his arm aside, possibly battered the lighter man off his feet. But instead, it was like he'd swung his sword into a stone wall.

The wizard tilted his head to the side, and then his forearm turned and his fingers made another gesture in the air; still he said not a word. But Kurogane felt the sudden, unearthly cold creeping up the blade of his sword and seeping into his iron gauntlet, until his hand was too numb to keep a solid grip on Souhi's hilt, and she clattered from his unfeeling grasp onto the ground. "Shit!" Kurogane cursed, still half in shock.

He could see, over the top of Fai's armor on the side of his neck, the lines of his tattoo were beginning to glow from black to a blood red. The geas that was supposed to keep him from using his magical powers? _My ass it does!_ Kurogane screamed silently. "What the hell is going on, wizard?" Kurogane demanded hoarsely. "Snap out of it!"

For the first time since they'd met, there was no hint of a smile or any kind of joke on Fai's face, in his eyes. He still hadn't said a word, and he was silent now as he rushed in again, this time seeking the vulnerable spots under Kurogane's shoulder joint, where the armpit offered passage directly to the heart. Kuorgane blocked him, and shifted his weight to move out of the way to the side; Fai turned with him, in a movement that Kurogane was almost _sure_ was copied from his own style -- he took advantage of that, grabbing the mage's wrist and using the angular momentum to fling them apart.

With a little space, he reached behind him and ripped Ginryuu from his sheath, half determined to end it in the next few seconds with a dragon blow. But Fai's eyes moved from Kurogane's face to his sword, and he saw a faint cherry radiance beginning to glow in the spine of the blade, as though it had been thrust directly into a blacksmith's forge. Felt the scorching heat spreading from its hilt to his hand, and was forced to drop it before he could be too badly burned.

The message was clear; no weapons. "All right," Kurogane snarled, fury beginning to overcome shock and disbelief. "Come on and get me, then, if that's what you want. You want me dead? Then what are you waiting for?"

Fai's lips moved, briefly, too quick and soundless for Kurogane to make out; and then he was attacking again, and this time Kurogane was ready for him. No swords now, just hand-to-hand against Fai and the knife.

They struggled back and forth in the flickering shadows of the firelight, with no sound except the rasping of both of their breath, the scrape of metal over metal as they wrestled for possession of the weapon. Even without Souhi, without Ginryuu, this was still nothing like an even contest. Fai _was_ strong after all, stronger than Kurogane had thought, even seeing the effortless way he had handled the bow. But Kurogane was still stronger.

He got a grip on Fai's knife hand and managed to force his arm back, pried his fingers open until the hilt of the knife tumbled from his grip onto the ground to join the other two blades. And now Kurogane was able to take the offensive, to grab Fai's wrists and use his greater strength and weight to drive him backwards, scrambling over the uneven ground until he slammed Fai's back against a the trunk of a tree.

A brief scuffle, but he managed to get his knee in Fai's gut and one arm across his throat, the other still pinning his right wrist back against the trunk. _"Why?"_ he roared, the fury coming to the surface now, fury and shock and betrayal.

Fai pulled futilely against the elbow pinning his throat, then went limp, and began to laugh, a disturbing, entirely humorless sound. "Why?" he gasped, and Kurogane lessened the pressure against his throat, just a little, so he could speak. "You have to ask why? You're a threat to us, Kurogane -- you're too powerful for us to let you live. Did you think you were special, somehow? Did you think you could be excused from this war just because it didn't please you?"

Kurogane knew it, he'd known all along that Fai was an enemy, but he'd let himself forget it. Wanted to forget it. He cursed himself for a fool, and twice for a blind fool -- but wanted to believe it so hard, that they could work together against the demons, that they could pretend the war didn't affect them. "Why _now?"_ he snarled. "If you meant to kill me all along, why did you wait so long?"

Fai's eyes widened, and an emotion flickered over his face too fast for Kurogane to read it, before he half-closed his eyes and let his face drop to the side. Avoiding Kurogane's gaze.

Kurogane growled low in his throat, shifted his grip to pull Fai towards him, inches away from his face. "You did all the cooking; you could have put poison in my food the first night, or any other night. Your magic is obviously working _just fine --_ you could have roasted me alive in my armor, any time. I saw what you did to my sword, a moment ago. You could still do that right _now!"_

On second thought, maybe he shouldn't be reminding Fai of this possibility.

But his frustrated anger carried him on, all the same. "You could have let me die in the fight with the bandits, or with the demon -- you could have put an arrow through my eye at a hundred paces! If you really wanted me dead you could have done it a hundred times by now -- you could have picked _any_ method except sneaking up on me in the dark with my own knife, and any other method would have worked! So why --"

The words died in Kurogane's throat, and his eyes widened. The answer presented itself inescapably; why indeed, unless... he hadn't really wanted to succeed. Hadn't really wanted Kurogane dead.

Fai was silent, his hair hanging over his eyes, and limp in Kurogane's grasp. Anger resurfaced again. "Answer me, damn you!" he hissed. "Quit jerking me around!" He pulled back one hand, aiming a punch at Fai's face; the mage's head tossed like a startled horse, there was a flash of blue eyes, and a sudden blue light snapped into the air, deflecting Kurogane's fist off to the side and into the tree.

Kurogane threw Fai onto the ground, following him down with his hands pinning Fai into the dirt. "That geas!" Kurogane shouted at him. "Is this what that was for? To kill me? No more bullshit about learning to hunt demons -- is _that_ the task you were magically bound to? Who was it who put you up to this -- was it that king of yours? King Ashura?"

Fai's head rolled to the side; he opened his eyes and looked up into Kurogane's, and his mouth curved into an unfeeling smile."So what are you going to do about it, Kuro-chan?" he whispered, his voice hoarse. "Going to kill me after all?"

It came back to him in a flash, Fai's voice floating through the darkness; _I want to be killed by someone who cares about me._ Fai had been right, what he'd said that night; it was the ones you cared about who had the power to hurt you the most. And he did care about the mage, much as he hadn't meant to; he'd come to care about him and his cooking and his chatter and his stupid _stupid_ smiles and the grace in the way he moved and the look that he surprised, sometimes, in those sky-blue eyes. Somewhere along the line he'd started to care about him, and that gave Fai the power to betray him.

And what he realized now, what drove him into a rage more than any other thing, was what no one had ever told him could happen; that despite the hurting, despite the betrayal, he _still_ cared about him, couldn't stop caring.

His mind hardened into resolution, and his lip curled into a sneer. "I wouldn't give you the _satisfaction,"_ he hissed, and abruptly hauled Fai up to his feet; Fai flinched, and the blue flight flashed again; Kurogane lost his grip, and the two of them stumbled apart.

Kurogane stared at him, from the distance of a few feet that seemed like an impassable gulf. "Was that your plan?" he growled. "If you couldn't kill me, you'd get me to kill you instead? Do you value your own life so little as that? Pah!"

Fai looked at him once, then quickly away, as though the sight of Kurogane standing there was painful to him. "I can't," he said quietly, his voice strained. His empty hands flexed nervously, open and closed. "I can't... disobey my king. Ashura. I can't disobey him..."

Kurogane took one stride forward; Fai flinched back again, and Kurogane half-anticipated another burst of magic, so this time he made no effort to reach out, just moved steadily forward until his face was inches from Fai's, eyes wide and frantic. "Then take me to this Ashura," Kurogane said.

"What?" Fai cried, backing up a pace. "No! He'll -- he'll kill you..."

"If Ashura wants me dead then let him do it himself," Kurogane snarled, "instead of sending others to do his dirty work for him. But he'll have to do it to my face, not sneaking around in the dark like a coward."

Fai bowed his head, his shoulders hunching; the anger still simmering in Kurogane was glad to see it, still satisfied. And after a long moment, Fai nodded.

  
\--------------------------------

They had traveled south for weeks, before that night; even with no more delays, no more scouting for demons, or stopping for weapons training, or for _baths,_ it would still be at least ten days riding straight north before they came to the border.

They rode in silence, cold and suspicious; Kurogane made sure to stay behind the mage so he could watch every move he made. They pushed on until darkness made it impossible to see the trail, then made camp.

It was excruciating.

It had been awkward enough when riding, but here, all the too-familiar domestic routine of the evening camp came back to them. The mage should be flitting about, cooking, chattering; _he_ should be doing something useful, tending to his weapons, writing his log. And maybe sometimes answering, if the mage said something unusually interesting.

Instead, he tried to go back to his old routine, the one that he'd performed every night he'd made camp before the wizard had ridden into his life; as though the mage were not there at all. He cleaned his weapons, honed the edge of his sword, all the while keeping a watchful eye out for danger. Danger inside the range of his firelight, this time, not outside it. Drank from his canteen and ate cold stale oatbread and beef jerky.

Fai ate nothing.

The mage stayed on the other side of the fire, as though placing a barrier between them. He didn't say anything, didn't do anything, and resolutely looked away from Kurogane's constant, suspicious monitoring.

When Kurogane finally gave up and went to sleep he did so in the old, familiar way; sitting braced on the ground with his head hunched forward, Souhi held ready in one hand. He only dozed, eyes slitted, ready to move at an instant's notice at the first sign of an attack.

Not that he thought an attack was likely. Fai must know as well as Kurogane did that he would not be able to take him by surprise a second time; that he had no chance of overpowering him hand-to-hand, since Kurogane had all the weapons. Barring a magical assault, which Kurogane wouldn't be able to do anything about whether he was alert for it or not, there was no way that Fai could beat him.

Which Fai must have known already, before he'd ever tried it. If not for the element of surprise he never would have even gotten close enough to foul on Tomoyo's wards the first time. And Kurogane remembered now, as he hadn't before, that Fai had on their very first meeting identified the wards, their location and purpose, passed his compliments on to Tomoyo about them. There was no way he couldn't have known about them when he'd lifted the knife. Absolutely no reason for him to made such a stupid move at all, unless he'd been secretly hoping to fail.

The further he got from the shock of that rude awakening, the more Kurogane wondered if he had ever been in danger from this man at all.

But he still kept his guard up, and slept with one eye open.

  
\--------------------------------

  
It had begun raining on the afternoon of the second day; a chill, steady drizzle that increased into a thundering downpour as the sky darkened into black. The temperature hovered just above freezing, keeping the rain from turning to snow; but Fai found himself wishing all the same that he still had his coat, the heavy, elaborately dressed layers that signified a wizard's regalia in Ceres. Even that would not have kept him warm, he realized reluctantly; it was designed to ward off snow and ice, and frozen winds, and this bone-chilling rain would have quickly soaked the layers of fabric through.

Fai sat hunched under the tree opposite Kurogane's, a leaf-bare oak that at least cut the gusts of wind, if it could not stop the water from falling. They didn't even try to build a fire that night; Kurogane again ate cold rations out of his supplies and curled up in his wary, tense crouch, pulling his cloak around him as he settled into sleep. He didn't speak to Fai.

They were up again at dawn; it was still raining, although less heavily now, but there was nothing to be done about it but to care for the horses, and go on.

Past noon the day finally lightened, the suffocating dark gray lightening to a silvery sheen as the sun made itself known, if not seen. The rain finally stopped, driven by a stiff chill breeze that hurried the last of the damp mists down the slope and away.

Fai stared for a long time down over the landscape revealed, not even bothering to guide Bella, although for the most part she needed no guidance as she picked her way down the slope. To the east the glowing bank of wards, as ominous and invincible as the clouds themselves, marked the boundary of the Nihon Empire, stretching away beyond sight. Although clouds still mounded in the sky, the air below that ceiling was crystal clear; he could see all the way north across the wooded hills and plains to the dark sharp-edged teeth of the mountains. Could see the peaks of the mountains were already white, ice and snow bleeding insidiously into the etched grooves of the mountain passes. Soon, very soon, winter would make the range impassable.

The clouds to the north broke briefly, and the flashing sun suddenly lit on the great blue-white glitter of the glacier, glimpsed for a moment between two peaks. Fai jerked his gaze away from that sight, feeling the same stab of hopeless grief and anger as he always did; the same helplessness.

How was it that even here, in this trackless wilderness, miles and weeks of travel away from his home, he could still be so hemmed in, so trapped on all sides by destiny? More than anything else he wanted to turn around and ride the other way; to go back to the days of making-pretend, not thinking about the geas, not thinking about King Ashura, not thinking about anything but the next day of traveling and discovering new ground, training with Kurogane and finding food and hunting demons with Kurogane. A pleasant, mindless diversion, one day and one mile blending into the next with no thought of past, or future.

But weeks of running away and putting off and putting off and putting off his task had brought him no solution, brought him no way out of the impossible situation he'd found himself in. He knew, on some level, that he could still escape. Kurogane, as silent and cold as any jail warder, could not stop him if he chose to flee; and he knew on another, more uncomfortable level that if he chose to use magic, to unleash the powers the geas was binding in check, then Kurogane could not stop him from completing his mission, either. And he could return to King Ashura...

Instead he found himself in this purgatory, this cold wet ride back home in shame. Where, when Ashura learned of Fai's disobedience and failure, he would doubtless take the task upon himself at once. Could he beg Ashura to spare Kurogane's life, throw them both on the king's mercy? If Ashura had been unmoved by Fai's pleas before, Fai couldn't see him likely to change his mind once his target was within arm's easy reach.

As for Kurogane himself -- Fai supposed, as far as he could understand Kurogane's mind at all, that Kurogane harbored some secret hope of being able to turn the tables on Ashura, to strike a decisive blow for his country in the heart of the enemy empire; Fai didn't think he could make Kurogane understand, arrogant as he was, how futile that plan was.

But if by some miracle, some stroke of luck, Kurogane were to get his chance, were to come within range to strike, within hope of victory... then Fai would have no choice but to strike first, and end his chance. Fai could not, could not disobey King Ashura; but he couldn't bear to harm Kurogane, either. _No matter what I choose, I am wrong,_ he thought despairingly. _No matter what I do... I still make the people I love unhappy._

He dropped his eyes to the dark wet woodlands below him, and did not look at the mountains again.

That night the temperature dropped, although at least it did not rain again, and they were able to build a fire again. Fai crouched in front of it, staring into the flames, avoiding Kurogane's piercing, accusing gaze. Still the man did not speak, and his presence was an intimidating, overpowering. It reminded Fai of King Ashura's anger, how it could press down on him and drown him without a word ever being spoken, or a hand raised.

"Hey," Kurogane said abruptly.

Fai flinched as though the word had been an arrow, hands clenching convulsively around his arms. "What?" he said, trying and failing to keep the word indifferent.

He looked up; Kurogane was glaring at him, again, his red eyes narrowed and dangerous, sparking glints in the firelight. "You going to eat tonight then, either?" Kurogane growled.

Fai stared at him, for a long moment not even registering the words, so senseless they were. "What?" he asked again, this time more baffled than defensive.

"You didn't eat anything last night. Or all of yesterday. Nor the night before that, either. When exactly were you planning to?"

Fai blinked; this was not the conversation he'd been expecting to have, if he'd expected one at all. Now that Kurogane drew his attention to it, he was dimly aware of a churning hunger, a shaking weakness in his limbs; but he'd been supressing awareness of it so thoroughly that it had barely registered except as a distant misery. Kurogane was right; he hadn't eaten anything since the night of the attack, and he hadn't even noticed that he hadn't. But Kurogane had.

Kurogane let out an exasperated breath, when no answer was forthcoming. "Or were you going to just keep going until you dropped? Starve yourself to death before we reach Ceres, was that your new plan?"

His voice was edged with heavy sarcasm and anger, and it finally connected in Fai's mind that Kurogane was upset _because_ he hadn't eaten. Bafflement drew his brows together in his face, and he struggled for a moment for a response before he said, in honest confusion, "Why do you care?"

Kurogane stared at him for a long time, as though trying to decipher a text in another language. "I don't get you," he said, his voice strangely soft and remote. "I didn't get you even before you tried to stick a knife in me in the dark, and I understand you even less now. How can anyone so careless of himself -- of his life -- still be upright and moving in this world? You've still got your youth, but you should be old enough to know better; you've got power and position and a body whole and healthy, and yet you act like you're already dead.

He paused a minute, and then added in a voice dark with all the anger that had been missing a moment before. "I've killed people, in my time, to stay alive -- and I've had people try to kill me, to stay alive themselves. And I didn't begrudge them for that. But people who still have lives to live, but don't care about living them -- those are the people I hate most in the world."

Fai stared in frank astonishment at this little speech, almost more words than he'd heard out of Kurogane ever before. Then a strange, humorless smile began to tug at the sides of his mouth. "I guess," he said lightly, "I must be the kind of person you hate the most, then."

Silence rang between them; after a moment, he broke it. "And if you hate me so much, then what do you care about what I eat?"

A hiss of anger, like cold water being dumped on the campfire; Kurogane said, "The hell with you, thinking you know _anything_ about what I do and don't care about?" He stood up abruptly, and Fai tensed, feeling the hairs on the back of his neck tingle with instinctive, protective magic.

Kurogane paced around the fire, coming close; Fai flinched away, but Kurogane crouched down beside him, bringing his burning eyes close. "I'll tell you one thing right now," Kurogane snarled. "This journey isn't finished yet. We've got to get back to Ceres, and across the border that's probably closed by now, and into the court itself so I can see Ashura. And to do all that, _I need you._ So right now I don't care what your reasons are, whatever they are -- you're going to eat."

Stunned into silence by the force of Kurogane's anger, Fai didn't resist as Kurogane pushed the food into his hands, glaring fiercely at him until he raised it to his mouth and took a bite. It tasted and felt like ashes in his mouth, and he gagged at first, before he could force himself to choke it down. "Kurogane," he said faintly, after he managed the first swallow, "I don't think -- I can't --"

And the shame, and the guilt, and the grief all came rushing back, and the gorge rose in his throat along with the frantic terror -- _no, no, not that, never again, I promised --_ and he was barely able to shove Kurogane aside and scramble a pace away from their fire before he threw up, emptying his stomach of the precious few bites he'd managed to get down. He kept vomiting even after his stomach was long empty, bringing up bile that seared his throat; he coughed, barely managed to avoid inhaling the acid, and retched on the frozen, slimy ground again.

To his surprise, he felt a hand on his back; heavy and cold. He looked up with watering eyes and saw Kurogane, kneeling next to him; his face was impassive, unjudgmental. "You all done?" Kurogane said quietly.

Fai coughed again, then nodded slightly. Kurogane nodded in reply. "I don't know what you expected, after not eating for three days," he said, his voice still calm, remote. He handed Fai a canteen of water -- at least there'd been no shortage of that, in all this rain. "Wash your mouth, drink a little -- then try again."

Fai stared at him in disbelief, then broke the gaze to take a drink of the cold water, rinsed it around his mouth and spat on the ground. Another drink stayed down a little better, and he could feel the shakes beginning to clear. "I don't understand you," he whispered. "Why are you acting like you still care about me?"

There was silence for a long moment. "You're right," Kurogane said, "you don't understand me."

  
\--------------------

The inner palace chamber was dark, lit only poorly by two torches flickering in the brackets. The elaborate decorations of the royal women's quarters could barely be made out along the walls. Kendappa's guards, and Tomoyo's -- even here, in the heart of the empire, they were never left unguarded -- were faded into invisible shadows along the walls.

Kendappa ignored them with a lifetime of practice, as her hands moved over the koto, eyes half-lidded as she concentrated on the music. A soothing tune turned itself over under her hands, an old simple tune that she'd played a hundred times, picked out by a delicate counterpoint that was new tonight. It was always the tiny, subtle variations that captured the attention and soothed the heart and mind, and although she'd studied a hundred disciplines from her childhood, it was always music that she returned to in times of distress.

She let the strings of the koto still, the last notes die in the darkened room, and blinked as she raised her head from the half-trance, looked over towards the couch where her sister lay, garments askew and hair in disarray.

"Are you feeling any better, my sister?" Kendappa asked quietly.

A soft breath, but no further movement from the couch. Kendappa let out a long sigh, and lifted her hands from the strings. "You must let your grief pass, Tomoyo," she said gently. "I know that he was dear to you, but he was only one man; only a servant, if one of Our strongest. It's not seemly to show such grief."

A movement in the shadows; a dark head nodded once, but the motion was forlorn, defeated. Kendappa felt a surge of sympathy; she knew that Lord Suwa had been more than a mere servant to her sister. He had been a beloved vassal, almost a friend, inasmuch as friendship could exist between master and warrior.

And for all his irreverence, his cavalier attitude towards authority, had annoyed her, Kendappa had respected the man too; he had been a magnificent fighter, a fierce and loyal spirit. But it was the fate of warriors to die gloriously, and not fitting for their commanders to grieve overmuch when they did.

Still, Tomoyo was not a warrior, and it was hard for her. Kendappa put aside the koto, and moved over to sit on to couch beside her sister, and took one of her hands.

"Tsukuyomi," she called, and the use of her formal title called Tomoyo back to the present, to the grave needs of their country. "Are you certain of what you felt? That the lord of Suwa did not fall in battle to some more ordinary hazard, or to of the demons, that destroyed your spells?"

 _"No,"_ Tomoyo's 'voice' came back to her, grey with grief, but clear and certain. _"The wards should still have existed, even if a demon were to break through them, even they failed to prevent his death. Nothing but a direct magical attack by a skilled wizard could have destroyed them entirely; and once they were destroyed, he would have no defenses..."_ The words trailed off, dissolving into more formless images of fire and fear, a swift and savage strike of lightning against helpless flesh.

Kendappa frowned, feeling a hard expression begin to settle on her features. "Then Ceres is making their move," she stated, and the words seemed to ring in the dark rafters overhead. "Not a direct stroke, but a subtle one; depriving us of our best warriors before the battle begins."

She looked back at Tomoyo. "Have you felt anything else, from the other demon hunters? Have there been any such attacks on the wards?"

Another wordless headshake. _"No. Not yet. But... I would not be able to see it, until it happened."_

"Then we still have time," Kendappa said grimly, "if we strike hard and fast, before all their plans can be carried out, then we may still have the advantage." She had been planning and pushing for just such a strike for weeks; the army was massed at the northern border, and could be at Ceres' doorstep in under a week. Once she gave the signal.

Although she hadn't spoken aloud, she knew that Tomoyo clearly understood her intent; and while her sister's gentle soul cringed at the horror of open warfare, they both well understood the necessity. Kendappa squeezed her hand gently, encouragingly. "Have you been able to see any more?"

 _"No,"_ Tomoyo answered for the third time. _"The wizards of Ceres still block my vision; I cannot see inside the borders of their country, either present or future. I can see nothing except that same recurring vision, of the castle floating in the sky. Nothing to explain that vision; I do not even know if it is in this time."_

Kendappa sighed in frustration, but it could not be helped; one could not force a dreamseer's visions. Maybe it was just as well. It was dangerous for a commander of the ground forces to rely too much on predictions of the future; not when they needed to be able to see the situation as it was in the moment and react appropriately. That was _her_ gift; and now, she knew, was the moment.

Still, there was an unavoidable risk inherent in this attack; once her troops were committed, there would be no turning back. "And what of the other power?" she asked. "Do you know any more of his intentions, his plans?"

Slowly, Tomoyo raised her head; her face was pale and desolate, but her eyes were resolute. She looked off past Kendappa, her eyes focussing on what seemed to be empty space in the corner of their room. A pair of moths fluttered around the torches; their shadows flitted large as bats against the yellow splash of torchlight on the walls. _"I have long sensed the danger from the east, the malevolent presence, but lately the dreams are becoming stronger."_ her answer came slowly, heavily. _"His intentions are, as they ever have been, the destruction of our country and our people. But I cannot touch his mind; I cannot see what he plans. I can only see what might be, if his intentions come to pass. The wards breaking, the walls crumbling... death in the fields, blood in the roads, the souls of our people, screaming..._

 _"The castle, floating in the sky... if he becomes ally with the wizards of Ceres, my sister, then we are lost; beset on two fronts, none of our armies will be able to save us then. But he has not allied with them yet. We have a little time, yet."_

Kendappa pressed her lips together, took a deep breath and nodded. "Then we still have a chance," she said, echoing her earlier resolution. "And we must take it. If we move swiftly, destroy the threat that Ceres presents, then they will have no chance to make alliance with our other enemy. Once we have subdued them, then we can turn all our attention to this other threat."

Kendappa moved her free hand to grip her sister's shoulder, smiled at her reassuringly. "We will prevail, my sister, do not doubt it; your lord Suwa's death will be avenged."

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The scene with Tomoyo and Kendappa was included partially to fulfill this story's Bechdel quota -- in other words, a conversation between two women, who talk to each other, for more than 30 seconds, about something other than a man. Technically this may still not qualify since they are discussing a man -- Kurogane -- but since they aren't discussing him in a romantic context, and the main point of the conversation is still about them going to war, I think I'm still in the clear.


	9. Battlefield Ceres

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kurogane and Fai encounter some unusual children, and attempt to escape through the mountains.

The rain returned the next morning, alternating between a fine mist and a light drizzle that nevertheless managed to bend the few remaining leaves and branches with as much water as a heavy downpour could have managed. Despite the weather, at least some semblance of normal routine returned to their journey north; while the easy banter and casual warmth of their earlier relationship was gone, they were no longer poised on a trigger point towards each other. Fai returned to gathering and cooking their meals, which they shared, under Kurogane's strict supervision. As for himself... while still slept with his hand on his sword, he no longer felt the need to have Fai in sight at every moment.

The rain finally broke just as they reached the foot of the mountains, the air becoming chill and dry although clouds still covered the weak winter sun. One morning they woke to find their campsite heavily frosted over; and Fai insisted that they take the time to thoroughly dry their clothes before re-donning them and continuing on. The temperature began to drop noticeably as they climbed, and Kurogane began to understand the wisdom of dry clothes.

The mountains began to loom up on either side of them now, pushing them further towards the east, where the wards of Nihon were veering from their northwards course. The ground grew steeper and rougher as they approached the series of long valleys and passes the marked the Ceres-Nihon border. At last the neutral no-mans-land of the uncharted wilderness turned from steep and treacherous into completely impassable, as the foothills gave way to true mountains.

"We'll have to leave the horses here," Fai said, breaking the silence for the first time in hours, and swung down off his horse. His voice was trying to come out flat and emotionless, but betrayed a slight unsteady waver. "Unless we want to walk right through the fighting, all the trails we'll need to take from here are too steep for them."

"We can't just leave them here!" Kurogane exclaimed.

"We can't take them with us," Fai said, still not looking at Kurogane. "Take whatever gear you think you can carry while rock-climbing, but blankets and warm clothes are the important part. It's only going to get colder from here." He leaned down, staring into the horse's eyes with their faces almost touching; Bella stamped uneasily and snorted, and Fai sighed as he straightened up, his hand resting on the side of her neck.

He still didn't look at Kurogane as he resentfully dismounted and went through his bags, trying to narrow his belongings down to only what he could carry. "They'll be all right," he said, still in that same flat tone. "Bella will find her way down to warmer territory and food, as long as your horse goes with her, they'll survive."

"Great, but what about us?" Kurogane grumbled, but Fai only shrugged slightly, and did not rise to the bait.

"You should probably leave your armor," Fai said in a neutral tone. He had already unbuckled most of his, and wrapped himself in a heavy, fur-lined coat. While not the white-and-blue garment that he'd been wearing when Kurogane first met him, it nonetheless gave him an alien look, one that Kurogane wasn't used to.

"No." Kurogane's denial brooked no argument.

Fai looked at him, then away, and shrugged again. "Have it your way, but it's going to make climbing difficult."

They went off again on foot, and as little as Kurogane liked it, he had to admit that Fai was right; the paths they took were more like chimneys carved into the rock face that a man could, just barely, find hand and footholds for to climb from one relatively level stretch of ground to the next. The air became noticeably colder as they ascended, and Kurogane found himself shivering; despite the thick padding under his armor, the wind whipping along the stone passages dug into the metal of his armor and leeched away all heat.

After what seemed like an eternity, and with several heart-stopping moments where Kurogane's clumsy gauntleted hands could find no purchase, they reached the top of the file, and for a moment stood on level ground while the valley stretched away below them. Kurogane was breathing hard from the climb, a type of exertion he wasn't used to, but when he raised his head and looked up his breath seemed to catch in his throat.

Below them, Ceres filled a series of broad climbing valleys; the rough mountain walls funneled together towards the north as the valley floor rose. As the elevation climbed, the broad flat fields that Kurogane was accustomed to seeing in Nihon were replaced by a gradation of stone-structured terraces, like some giant had built a stairway into the mountainside itself. The gap twisted away in the distance towards the higher, rockier passes, beyond which, according to the geography lessons Kurogane remembered, lay Ruval itself.

But it was the mountains that dominated the scene. Kurogane had never seen real mountains before, had never really comprehended the sheer mass of stones, towering up and up and filling the distance. And capping the mountain peaks like a crown was an immense wall of ice, glittering like jewels where the sunlight fell and lurking blue-green in the shadows between the stone walls like the depths of the oceans themselves, somehow elevated to the mountaintops.

From this distance the crown of the ice looked flat as a pancake, fathoms deep over the valleys and thinner over the ridges, where some peaks broke through like the prows of sailing ships. It was still miles away, but Kurogane swore he could feel the cold breath of the ice like a slap to the face.

He abruptly became aware of Fai standing next to him, saying something, his tone still stiff and formal. "Kurogane, I don't suppose you -- What are you doing?" he asked, sounding surprised.

"What is that thing?" Kurogane's whisper was hoarse with disbelief and awe.

He felt more than saw Fai turn to follow his gaze, but he definitely heard the puff of breath that the mage let out when his eyes met the glacier. "The Necklace of Windhome."

"What?"

"It was named by an explorer who came here, over a thousand years ago. He thought it was beautiful and so he called it that, because it looked like sapphires, strung out like jewelry over the neck of the mountains. Of course," he added in a bitter tone, "it was much higher up then, or he might have called it something different."

"Higher?" Kurogane could not stop staring at the gleaming mass of ice. "You mean, it moves? How can a mountain of ice move?"

Fai shrugged. "How does it move? How does a river move, when it's not alive? How does a tree grow, when it can't move from one spot? It just does, Kurogane. There's a technical explanation if you want one, but we don't have time for it right now. Just take my word for it," he said with a bitter laugh, "it moves."

"It's... beautiful," Kurogane said in a subdued voice.

"Yes, it is," Fai said bleakly. "And deadly."

"Deadly?" Kurogane tore his eyes away from the glacier to stare at Fai in disbelief. "How?"

Fai turned his back on the sight of the glacier, and started walking away; Kurogane had to hurry to keep up with him. "I told you, didn't I, that there are some people born with the talent of precognition? Well, there are some of those among the wizards of Ceres, as well. A hundred years from now the ice will fill the valley, covering everything. It will part and flow around the peak of the castle itself, leaving it stranded by itself among the shining blue ice, like a castle floating in the sky."

"The necklace of Windhome will choke us, Kurogane." He glanced at Kurogane and shrugged, like there was nothing to be done. "If I don't die in this war, I'll probably still be alive to see it happen."

That attitude of resignation, of defeat grated on Kurogane. "You're a wizard, aren't you?" he demanded. "Can't you do something about it?"

Fai blinked at Kurogane, as though the thought had never occurred to him before. "Wizards..." He blew out his breath, running one hand through his hair as though trying to think of how to put it so that a warrior would understand. "Wizards have some power over the natural world, yes, but we're still only men. Not one wizard, nor a dozen, nor a hundred working all together for a hundred years would have the power to turn back a force of nature on this scale. It was a glacier like this one that carved these valleys out of solid stone a million years ago. Could you level a mountain by hand, using a teaspoon? That's the amount of force it would take to stop a glacier in its path."

"Isn't there anything you can do?" Kurogane just couldn't accept that so easily. Natural disasters were inevitable, he knew; Nihon lived in fear of earthquakes, and of the terrible storms that came out of the west that could flatten a whole village. But such dangers were transient, and when they had passed, you could pick up the pieces and begin again. Kurogane couldn't even imagine a disaster so complete that there would be no going on, afterwards.

"Oh, there is." Fai's smile twisted. "We can win."

  
\--------

  
They came out of one series of ravines to find themselves abruptly facing empty air; the valley stretched away below them, but ahead and to the right the steeply climbing landscape turned the first corner that lead up into the mountain kingdom of Ceres.

They still had met no other people, but the signs of human activity could not be ignored; they had both seen the columns of oily back smoke stretching heavenwards, although neither of them had commented on it. Now they saw the scenes of devastation unfold out before them, and a new chill that had nothing to do with the weather settled between them.

Kurogane had never been to the border between Nihon and Ceres before; as a child he had never traveled far from his home province of Suwa, and after it had been destroyed he spent all his time either training in Edo, or patrolling in the wilderness to the west and to the south. But he had no trouble picking out the strange, alien style of Ceres buildings, nor identifying the Nihon border itself, marked by the warded walls -- lower and cruder, to his eye, than the ones in the south; the border had shifted back and forth enough times that the walls kept having to be rebuilt.

And now it was shifting again. The Nihon army had pushed out beyond the walls, and most of the broad lower valley of Ceres was in smoking ruins. He could almost track their progress chronologically by the bands of devastation that overtook each broad stone terrace; those closest to the walls were wasted and silent, but further north activity and fires still seethed. The towns and buildings seemed to be still standing, although blackened and emptied, but the fields beyond them were charred out ruins. And further north still, almost obscured from sight by the unsteady terrain, the violent roil of an active front.

"They've torched the harvest," Fai said from beside him, and his voice was ragged with more emotion than Kurogane had ever heard from him before. "They --" He began to move forward like a sleepwalker, before he came to himself with a start.

Guilt pricked at Kurogane, along with a driving frustration. "What did you expect would happen?" he demanded. "First article in the books of war, to deprive your enemy of the resources they need to continue fighting. Of course they fired the fields."

Fai shot him a look of almost pure loathing, before he jerked around and started walking to the north. Growling under his breath, Kurogane started after him; he was not about to let Fai run off on him _now._ Even when Fai had turned on him it had never been like this before; never been _us_ against _them,_ never been Ceres against Nihon. He'd thought they were beyond all that.

"The more fools you, then," Fai said without turning to face Kurogane, his voice tight with suppressed emotion. "Because now there will be no end to this war until we've taken all our old lands back, and broken Edo, as well."

"You think we're going to just let that happen?" Kurogane snarled, and increased his pace until he was level with Fai, reached out to grab the man's arm. "Maybe you don't like it, but don't forget, it was _Ceres_ who started that war! What did you expect the reaction would be, when you attacked without provocation? Those people down there are fighting for their homes and families, fighting for their land!"

" _Their_ land?" Fai whirled to face him, and Kurogane nearly let go of his arm in shock; despite having seen Fai in a hundred moods over the past few weeks, this was the first time he'd seen Fai's features distorted by fury. "Land that was stolen from us! What are the homes and the families of squatters, when the rightful owners have been pushed out or killed?"

"That was over a hundred years ago!" Kurogane growled in exasperation, wishing he could reach out and shake some sense into Fai. "Are you listening to yourself? You sound like a green recruit filled with your country's propaganda! I thought you were the one who didn't want war. Well, there can never be peace as long as you keep clinging to old injuries, or valuing your stupid pride in a few square miles of worthless land!"

" _Worthless?_ " Fai's eyes flashed blue fire, and he shoved Kurogane away from him with unexpected force. "What can a rich man say about the worth of a single loaf of bread, to a poor man who has nothing? Those few square miles of 'worthless' land made up three-quarters of our arable farmlands!"

"Look, I understand that --"

"You understand _nothing!"_ Fai hissed. "Without this --" his hand swept out across the panorama below, "We're reduced to whatever food we can grow in three cold months in the rocks of the high passes! You, who've lived in the summerlands all your life, what do you _understand_ about farming in the mountains, in poor thin soil that gets poorer and thinner every year, in short summer months that grow shorter and shorter as the glacier creeps down the mountains? You, son of nobility, who've never gone a day without a meal, what do you _understand_ about winter in Ceres, where a father must look at his two children and decide which of them he will feed until spring?"

Kurogane fell back, momentarily stunned, silenced not so much by Fai's words as by the pain and rage that drove them, more anguish and fury than he'd ever heard from the pale man before.

Fai turned away, and took a few short, jerky steps towards the precipice. He took a deep breath, and when he spoke again it was more controlled. "Twenty years ago, one of of every ten Ceres citizens starved to death during the winter," he said at last, reciting statistics in a voice of false calm. "Last winter, it was one in five. In a few more years, there will be nothing left of us at all. You say that your people are fighting for their families, fighting for their lives? Well, so are mine. And King Ashura will do whatever he needs to do to save the lives of our people."

Kurogane scoffed. "And I suppose Ashura is doing all this out of the goodness of his heart, right? The fact that this is going to increase his wealth and glory -- not to mention the acreage of the kingdom he rules twice over -- that doesn't factor into his decisions at all, does it?"

Fai jerked back as though he'd been stung. "Don't you dare talk about Ashura like that --" he said fiercely. "You have no idea, you have no right to act as though you know what he's thinking or planning!"

"I may not have ever met this Ashura of yours, but I know how kings and emperors play this game," Kurogane shot back, thinking of Kendappa, of her father whom he'd only read about in histories, of their grandmother; cunning, ruthless conquistadors that they'd all been, to expand Nihon to its current state of wealth and prestige. "So those foothills are yours -- do you imagine that Ashura will go that far and just _stop?_ He'll keep pushing, he'll want more, he'll secure more and more land -- for the 'security of the borders,' or whatever. He'll _never_ stop, not until he's made all the empire of Nihon his own, or until all your countrymen are dead."

That one struck a nerve, he could tell by the sudden flash of uncertainty over Fai's face. "He would never --"

"I know you have a brain in that fluffy head of yours somewhere -- do you ever use it, or do you just believe whatever you've been told?" Kurogane demanded, somewhat cruelly. " _There will always be a reason for war._ That's how this game is played. Amaterasu will never let go of this land, no matter how much right you think you have to it -- she can't afford to look so weak in front of her generals. Once you start down this path, of taking what you want by iron and blood -- or by magic -- there will be no end to it."

"And how else do you propose that we get what we need?" Fai snapped back. "Since you seem to think that enough food to live on is a luxury that we can do without --"

" _Trade_ ," Kurogane said promptly. "So maybe you don't have farmland, but you have something else that's just as valuable -- you have wealth of your own. Everyone knows about the mines of Ceres, the iron deposits and silver veins in the higher reaches."

It had been for the iron, not for the admittedly marginal farmland of the foothills, that Nihon had made its push against Ceres a hundred years ago. There were no major metal deposits in all of the broad lands that Nihon had conquered, and they were forced to rely on sand ore gleaned from the rivers that flowed from the mountains for their few, insanely expensive pieces of steelwork. The two swords were marks of nobility precisely because they were so rare and expensive; most of the steel that Nihon produced went to forge those precious weapons.

"If there's one thing that Nihon needs, it's iron -- not just iron, but coal, too, and the steel that only Ceres can produce. Just one of these --" and Kurogane reached out and grabbed Fai's arm again, this time knocking his fist against the burnished, blue-tinted steel. " --could buy enough grain to feed a family for a year. So why don't you _trade_ for what you need, as equals, instead of trying to take it by force?"

Fai stared at him in astonishment for a moment, then threw back his head and laughed, although the sound didn't have much humor in it. Kurogane wasn't feeling very humorous about it, either. "What's so funny?" he growled.

"Nothing," Fai gasped, and subdued his outburst to a chuckle. "Just the -- the idea that it would be _you_ to come up with such a thing, the great warrior, demon-slayer, standing here and talking about _trade agreements_ as a way to end the war."

Kurogane was not amused. "I'm a practical man," he growled. "I look for logical solutions to problems, and I don't have the time to put up with other people's illusions and stupidities. It's not my fault that other people don't bother to step back and see things clearly."

"That's so." The last of the laughter died, and Fai stepped forward into his personal space, his lips drawn back over his teeth in a way that only superficially resembled a smile. "See this clearly, then. Ceres and Nihon could never be _equals_ in such a relationship. How could they, when Nihon could demand any price they choose, and we would have to pay it? All you would have to do is refuse to trade unless we met your price; Nihon could go a year without iron, but Ceres could not go a year without food.

"Within a few years we would be little more than slaves, bartering away our independence for bare survival. And once we had put our finest metals, our best weapons in the hands of the Nihon imperialist army, how long would it be before we were made slaves in truth?"

Kurogane wanted to argue with that, but considering his country's land-hungry expansion over the past generations, he knew he wouldn't have much ground to stand on. Instead he said only, "Then don't act like you're backed into a corner and have no alternatives, when you're too proud to even consider any."

"I don't think a warrior of Nihon is in any position to lecture us about _pride_ , Fai spat. "Or -- why is it that you're expending all this effort, to hold onto a little patch of 'worthless' land?"

"You can't win this war!" Kurogane shouted, frustration overcoming his attempts at calm reasoning. He sweeping gesture to include the destruction below. "All this happened in, what, a week? At this rate, there will be nothing left of you by the end of the month! Does Ceres even have an army left any more? Open your eyes; we've already won!"

"Somehow it doesn't surprise me that you would consider wanton destruction the same as victory," Fai said, with a curl of his lip. He turned away, jerking the hood of his cloak up over his head. "This war isn't over yet."

  
\----------------------------

  
The winding, hidden mountain track was one Fai had followed many times on his sojourns out of the country, when he wanted to pass through southern Ceres and around the Nihon border undetected. It was the same one he had followed when he had gone on the ill-fated scouting mission with Captain Kurotsunagi and his men, and it was the one that he and Kurogane followed now.

His familiarity helped; the track roughly paralleled the valley below, but was several hundred feet further up, and it passed through many winding dips and gullies that put the main valley out of sight. Kurogane followed close behind him without complaint, although Fai could tell he was at best an amateur mountaineer; but Fai knew when to warn him about a particularly tricky slope, or when a rock face that looked deceptively sturdy wasn't. At least, Fai thought, Kurogane had finally consented to get rid of his gloves.

They were drawing nearer to the first pass now, and Fai could see the concentration of black-armored Nihon soldiers growing thicker and darker up ahead. The sight worried him; there was no way they could pass that many soldiers unseen, but no other way to get up into the mountains. The clandestine path they were on had helped him get in and out of Ceres secretly before, but they were deep into Ceres now, and this had been part of friendly territory for time unknown. It was never meant to take them all the way to Ruval.

As he'd feared, the trail petered out only a few miles further on, winding down down a series of scrubbed gullies to meet the broader valley floor. They were very close to the pass, and straight in front of them the mountain wall began to bulge out in a high, sheer-faced cliff, beginning to close the walls of the valley against them.

In the shadow of that cliff, tucked up against the rounded walls running by the main road, had been a little village, hardly more than a cluster of houses surrounded by ranching pastures. It, too, had trails of smoke rising from it, and some of the thatching on the stone buildings were still on fire.

Fai and Kurogane crouched out of sight on the last turn of the path, and watched as a pair of bored-looking Nihon soldiers made a slow circuit on the ground below them, obviously scouts or perimeter patrols separated from the main army.

Kurogane leaned over and whispered to Fai; his warm breath gusted against Fai's ear in a way that made him shiver convulsively. "What do we do now?" Kurogane whispered.

It was almost an exact mirror of the question that Fai had asked of Kurogane on the day they were ambushed by bandits, and a corner of Fai's mouth turned up in a smile at the memory. "We could always kill them," he quipped back.

Kurogane glared at him, not amused, and his return whisper was harsh. "I didn't come up here to kill soldiers, and I'm sure as hell not going to start with the ones on my own side! But we can't just walk past them, either."

"No, I guess not," Fai sighed, and raised his head a little higher for a better look. Although he could see more figures moving, a ways off through the haze, none of them seemed to be heading in their direction, or even looking their way.

Offensive magic against Nihon soldiers was close enough to his mandate that Fai was pretty sure he could do it, even as he could feel the presence of the geas, stifling his power and slurring the words on his tongue. He waited a few minutes longer, almost until the soldiers would come within sight of them where they crouched, then used a sturdy stick to draw the symbols in the dust of the path, whispering the key words to activate the spell. A few seconds later, the two soldiers slumped and toppled over.

He stood up and began moving out from behind the cover, stepping over the fallen bodies as he headed towards the village. Behind him, he heard Kurogane scrape against the rock as he stood, but then the other man paused, staring down at the two soldiers. "Will they be all right?" Kurogane asked, sounding oddly subdued.

"It's just a sleep spell," Fai answered. "They'll be fine as long as they wake up before they freeze to death." Personally, Fai gave them about fifty-fifty odds on that, but he wasn't going to say so; nothing he could do would change things for them either way.

They headed towards the main road, but were forced to duck and hide repeatedly as their paths crossed with other soldiers. Fai used his sleep spell twice more, although that became increasingly dangerous the further they went; if the unconscious soldiers were discovered too soon it would almost be as bad as being found themselves. They were forced to duck into a burnt-out building to avoid the next patrolling pair, and argued in whispers.

"We're not going to get anywhere at this rate," Kurogane said furiously. "Why can't you just put them all to sleep at once, instead of doing it in ones and twos?"

Fai rubbed his eyes; he almost preferred the days when Kurogane disdained to use magic at all, instead of pestering him about it at every turn. Although this felt more like a challenge, or a dare, than an honest request for help. "Kurogane, the first day after we met, you fought and killed two demons at the same time. Could you have fought against ten thousand? Because that's how many soldiers are between us and -- "

Kurogane's head snapped around, fast enough to make Fai lose his train of thought; his hand went in a flash to the hilt of his sword, although he didn't draw it, at least not yet. "Did you hear that?" Kurogane growled, so softly that Fai could barely make out the words.

Fai shook his head, and refrained from commenting that he could hardly be expected to hear much with Kurogane arguing with him all the time; _Kurogane_ had, obviously. "What is it?" he hissed back.

"The guards out there aren't just patrolling. They're looking for something," Kurogane said quietly. "And it's here."

Fai stared into the shadows of the building; although smoke-blackened and char-carpeted, empty of people or living goods, the walls were still intact and enough of the second floor remained to provide shelter from the weather. He started to draw the figures for the sleep-spell in the ashes, then changed his mind; why sit here and speculate?

Instead, he whispered the words for a knowing spell, the most basic of wizard eyes. Kurogane started when an unseen _something_ took off in a whir from between Fai's hands, but he ignored the man's demands for an explanation as he closed his eyes and followed the magic, searching for whatever it was that had drawn the soldiers here.

 _Oh._ He let the spell fade and opened his eyes, got up and walked towards the back of the building. The stone wall turned towards what had once been a small kitchen, with a corner walled off for storage; with no windows, it was almost completely dark. Fai leaned against the stone lintel, keeping his hands carefully in the open, and called softly, "It's all right. You can come out; we won't hurt you."

A long moment of breath-held silence, perhaps to see if Fai was just bluffing; but he stayed where he was, ignoring Kurogane's hissed questions, just waiting. At last, a shuffle in the darkness of the pantry resolved itself into a flash of white, and then another; two pale faces, peeking hesitantly out into the light. Two children.

"Wh-what do you want?" a voice called out hesitantly; high, young, and unsure. Fai thought it was a boy, but couldn't be positive.

Another voice, sharper and more impatient, rose and overrode the unsure one. "You aren't soldiers, are you? From Nihon?"

"Do I look like I'm from Nihon?" Fai smiled brightly and lifted his hands to show that they were empty, combed his hair away from the side of his face to show the color. "And no, I'm not a soldier, either."

Suspicion colored the unseen voice. "But you aren't from the village, either. Who are you and what do you want?"

Fai chose to overlook the first question, for now, and instead just said, "We're trying to get up to Ceres. We were hoping to make it before the pass was blocked, but... well. What about you? Do you want to come with us to Ceres, too?"

"Why would we want to go there, dumbass?" The voice was tinged with scorn. "Nihon soldiers are just gonna burn it down, too."

The friendly smile froze on Fai's face, as he tried to come up with some response to this. Just then, the scrape of a foot over cinders sounded, and Kurogane's voice rumbled impatiently from his elbow, "Who the hell are you talking to back here?"

There was a gasp from the ruined kitchen, and a sudden scuffling noise. "You lied! You said you weren't with the s-soldiers!" said the first voice, the frightened one.

Fai glanced over at Kurogane, saw the frustrated set of his teeth as he shot back in a low voice, "I'm not with _them._ If I were, why the hell would I be hiding from them? And if you keep yelling like you just did, they're going to come here and find _all_ of us."

"Kurogane," Fai hissed, elbowing the other man in the side without regard to his armor. "Don't frighten them!"

"All right," the suspicious voice said, somewhat to Fai's surprise. "If you aren't soldiers, then you can just go away and leave us alone."

"Like hell we're just going to leave," Kurogane said. "Now you two are going to come out where we can see you and we'll talk. Or am I going to have to come in there after you?"

Fai sighed. "You really need to work on your diplomatic manner, you know."

The two men backed away from the doorway to give the strangers some space; after a long moment, some shuffling and furious whispers resolved themselves into two small figures crawling a little sullenly out of the dark space into the light.

The uncertain voice belonged to a boy, thin and with mousy hair and small eyes; he couldn't be more than ten or eleven. The owner of the sharp voice was a girl a little older, almost as old as Princess Sakura, and Fai's heart twinged at the resemblance. Both of the children were dirty and ragged, their faces sharp with hunger; the boy fearful, the girl sullen.

"What are your names?" Fai asked gently, crouching down in front of them so that he wouldn't loom. Kurogane refused to move with him, and was doing enough looming for the both of them.

After a moment the boy shuffled his feet and said, "I'm Masayoshi, and this -- this is Chunyan."

"Stupid, don't just tell them everything!" Chunyan smacked the boy on the head, scowling, then wheeled towards Kurogane. "This guy is definitely from Nihon, and with all that armor you _have_ to be some kind of soldier! So what are you, a deserter or something?"

" _No,_ " Kurogane growled, and Fai heard in his voice that he didn't have a lot of patience for this line of questioning. "Why I'm here is my own business. What I want to know is, where the hell are your parents?"

That question prompted a cold silence. Masayoshi looked ready to burst into tears, water already welling in his eyes, and Chunyan simply scowled more fiercely than ever. Fai was already expecting her to say that their parents had been killed by Nihon soldiers, but he wasn't expecting her to say, in a wooden voice, "They left."

It suddenly clicked in Fai's head what had seemed... off, about the children. Masayoshi had jet-black hair and sallow skin under the dirt, but his eyes were small, round, and hazel-brown. Chunyan, while her hair was almost as dark and fell straight as a knife, had the fair skin common to the northlands -- but her eyes were like Kurogane's. And, in realizing that, he suddenly understood why they were alone.

"They just ran off and left you by yourself?" Kurogane demanded. "What the hell kind of people have kids, in Ceres?"

"The people from Nihon would kill them both on sight," Fai bit off. "Is that really supposed to be any better?"

"Still, how could they just run off and leave her to take care of her brother --"

"They're not brother and sister, Kurogane," Fai corrected him wearily. "They just... have the same heritage."

"You mean --" Kurogane broke off as he stared at them.

"He _means_ we're half-breeds," Chunyan tossed her hair out of her face and glared up at Kurogane, daring him to make something of it. "And they didn't want to take a couple of half-breeds with them when they ran off to Ceres, that's all. But I don't care. They're going to get killed wherever they go, so what?"

"How?" Kurogane asked.

Fai looked away, and said quietly, "If you go back a decade, Ceres and Nihon were as peaceful as they ever are, and things are different out on the borderland. Regardless of the stances of their capitals, to the people actually living out here, there would be trade, commerce... meetings and partings, love affairs and marriages." At least he hoped that there had been love affairs and marriages; there were other, less pleasant ways to get half-breed children, although most children of rape didn't live past infancy. "It's only in the past few years then that things have really gone downhill."

"It's none of your business, anyway," Chunyan said sullenly. Masayoshi was staring at the floor, but his right hand was wrapped tightly around Chunyan's left, and Fai noticed that despite her cynical words, she was clinging back to him just as hard. "If you're not soldiers, then you should just go away and leave us alone already."

Fai swallowed, and leaned forward. "We need to get to Ceres," he said, looking the girl steadily in the eye. "Do you or Masayoshi know of any way that we can get there, without going through the pass where all the soldiers are?"

The two children exchanged glances; Fai waited patiently. Finally, Chunyan gave a little toss of her head, and Masayoshi said hesitantly, "There's -- there's the old tunnel."

"A tunnel?" Fai's mouth suddenly went dry, and his heart began to thump painfully in his chest.

Masayoshi nodded. "We used to play there, when I was a kid. Me and my big sis --" He stopped abruptly, closed his mouth and looked at the floor again.

"It used to be an iron mine," Chunyan put in. "Ages and ages ago. It's why this town was built here. After a while, they stopped finding anything in the mine, but by that time they'd made tunnels all through the cliffside. They connected to the pass up at the top to make it easier to ship stuff up there. It's been abandoned for ages, though."

"Where do we find this tunnel?" Kurogane demanded, and Masayoshi gave him a fearful sideways look, ducking his head.

"On the other side of m-the house on the other side of the blacksmith," he said. "There's a path... The soldiers found the entrance, but they don't know how deep it goes."

Kurogane and Fai exchanged a look. "That's our route, then," Kurogane muttered. "Can you show us?"

The children were reluctant to leave their hiding place, but it was clear that Chunyan wanted them gone, no longer in danger of attracting unwanted attention. She led them out through the back of the ruined house, into narrow little lanes between the backs of houses, choked with dead overgrown weeds. Ducking soldiers the whole way, they passed out of the back of the village and up a curving, gravel-lined path between stunted pines.

Chunyan stopped when the last of the houses was out of sight, and pointed ahead. "There," she said, keeping her voice almost to a whisper. "It's at the end of this path. I don't know if there are any soldiers there now, but we aren't going any closer. Now go away."

Fai chewed his lip, then took a deep breath and went for the plunge. "You could come with us, you know," he said. "We're trying to get up to Ceres, up to the palace city. I -- I have friends there. They could take you in, take care of you. Maybe we could even find your parents --"

"No," Chunyan said, her face stony and her voice cold. "It won't be safe up there. Not for long. The soldiers will come and burn everything, just like they did here. And -- and besides, I don't want to see those people again."

"Chunyan..." Masayoshi said in a small voice. She looked at him, and tried to smile for the first time since they'd met her; it looked tired and fake plastered to her dirty face.

She tugged Masayoshi a little closer, then lifted her chin to them defiantly. "We'll be fine," she said, her voice strong and challenging again. "We'll be fine as long as we're together."

"You can't stay here," Fai argued desperately.

"Give it up," Kurogane said, and Fai shot him a glare. Kurogane just shrugged. "We can't force them to come with us; it's not like we could drag them without making noise. If they've lasted this long here, they'll have as good a chance on their own as they will with us."

Fai looked back at them, and his shoulders slumped in defeat as he nodded. But there had to be something he could do for them; they were countrymen of Ceres too, the country he was sworn to protect.

"Give them some of our food, Kurogane," Fai ordered, not turning his head to look up at the bigger man.

He didn't need to see him to sense the outrage his question prompted, though. "Are you out of your mind? We need that --"

 _"Give it to them,"_ Fai said, and his voice cracked on the command. Kurogane was quiet for a long moment, apparently sensing that Fai was on the ragged edge and would not be argued with.

There was movement behind him; finally, he dared to look, saw Kurogane digging through their bags. "They can have some of it," Kurogane said, a slight edge of resentment in his voice. He handed the package of food over to Chunyan, who snatched it and glared at him ungratefully. "But I'm not going to give them all of it, no matter what you say, wizard; it's not all yours to decide, you know."

Fai looked down at the ground, wrapped his arms around his torso; he realized he was shaking. "Whatever you say," he muttered.

He heard a gasp in front of him, and saw both of the children staring at him. Masayoshi was half hiding behind the older girl, who was glaring at him in a mix of shock and outrage. "That's what you are!" she exclaimed, pointing at him with one shaking finger. "You're one of those wizards! That's how you found us!"

They were backing away from him, clutching the food and staring at him with wide eyes, as though he had suddenly become a snake that was about to strike. He raised his hands as if in supplication, taking a step towards them. "Wait, you don't have to --"

"You're not going to eat us!" Chunyan said in rising tones, then turned and bolted, dragging Masayoshi behind her. They dodged around the corner of the path, and then disappeared in astonishing silence into the brush under the trees. Within a matter of moments Fai could no longer make out which way they'd gone.

Instead, he whirled to glare at Kurogane. "What did you have to say that for?"

Kurogane looked shocked by the children's sudden flight, but covered it with bluster as usual. "How was I supposed to know they'd react like that?" he snarled. "They're _your_ people, aren't they? What do wizards do in Ceres that has little kids be afraid of them?"

"Nothing!" Fai shouted, too upset by the denouement to remember to keep his voice down. "Just old superstitions -- especially down near the border, where they mingle with backwards ideas from Nihon, and --"

"Who's there?" a voice called from further down the path, and Kurogane and Fai shot each other looks of fury and chagrin, before whirling to face the soldier as he rounded the corner to come face-to-face with them. Kurogane had his sword out in an instant, causing the man to skid to a stop; and Fai said the words that caused him to slump into sleep before he could call for help.

"This isn't the time for this," Kurogane growled, re-sheathing his sword. "We have to get out of here now, and that damn tunnel is the only way."

"Fine," Fai said, and pushed back on the nervous tremor that wanted to creep into his voice.

\--------

The tunnel. The old mine. Even standing still, a hundred paces from the timber-framed mine opening, the tunnel seemed to grow larger, creeping across the distance between them like it wanted to swallow them. Fai stood staring at it, rooted in place as soon as it had come into view underneath the trees; he could already feel the cold air of the rock walls all around him...

"Hey," Kurogane whispered loudly, turning to look at him from a few yards further down. "What are you doing? Come on -- they'll be after us soon."

Fai shook his head and swallowed hard, unable to take his eyes away from the patch of darkness that pulsed in his vision. He could feel his heart like a trip-hammer in his chest; already it felt like it was going to burst, and he hadn't even entered the tunnel yet. What was he going to do once they got inside, and the last of the daylight faded, and there was nothing but tons of cold rock pressing down on every side --

"Come on!" Kurogane came back a few steps and took hold of his arm, tugging him along the path. "If all that shouting a moment ago isn't already bringing them here, pretty soon they're going to find that trail of bodies we left behind, and that's going to lead them right here. We've got to get into the tunnels, where we can lose them, or at least get a head start up into the pass --" he broke off, getting a good look at Fai's expression. "What's wrong with you?"

"I can't do it," Fai said, his mouth and throat so dry that it barely came out as a whisper. "I can't go in there."

Kurogane stared at him. "Why the hell not? This is the only way to get past the army, which you didn't want to fight, and no matter how long it's abandoned, it should be --" he stopped again, and his expression melted into resignation tinged with dismay. "Oh, hell. You're one of those people who's afraid of small spaces, aren't you?"

Fai wanted to laugh, but there was no way his chest was going to unlock enough to allow that. Afraid of small spaces -- well, that was one way to describe the problem. His tongue felt too thick for any further speech, so he settled for a tight, jerky nod.

He heard Kurogane swear, felt the man leave his side for a few minutes, but he couldn't quite see what he was doing. He couldn't stop staring at the entrance to the mine; it lay like an animal in wait, ready to pounce, to devour... it would swallow him whole, and he'd never ever see the sun again...

He heard a sharp noise and then a sizzle behind him, but it was the sudden gust of smoke that broke his reverie enough to turn his head. Kurogane had created a torch, out of leafless branches and supplies from his bag, and he was just finishing a second one. He stood up and came back over to Fai, gripping his arm again. His expression was resolute, but there was a look in his eyes that Fai couldn't quite understand. "Listen to me," he said quietly, and held the torch in front of them. "You just follow me, and keep your eyes on this. If I lead you in there, you have my word that I'll take you out again, and it won't be dark as long as we still have the torches."

"I can't," Fai whispered again. It wasn't that he didn't want to, or that he was afraid; he just couldn't make himself move towards that smothering darkness.

Kurogane's bare hand slid down Fai's arm to engulf his hand; it felt searingly hot against Fai's cold skin, and the pressure of his grip was not quite enough to be painful. "You have to," Kurogane said simply. "We've got to move forward. Standing still is death."

Kurogane turned and walked towards the mouth of the tunnel, and Fai had no choice but to follow him.

As they passed under the first set of timber bracing, they heard shouting from the village below them. Kurogane's grip tightened convulsively on Fai's hand, and yanked him forward into the darkness.

After that, things seemed to get strange and disjointed, like in a nightmare. He was vaguely aware of flickering torchlight playing over dark earth walls, that gradually gave way to stone. Aware of Kurogane turning this way and that, swinging the light into different tunnel entrances. Most of the side tunnels dwindled quickly into crawl spaces, dead-ending into glittering rock walls; but some of them seemed almost as high and well-shored as their own.

The side passages lit up like beacons in the dark, fading away again as Kurogane moved onwards. He was cursing nonstop under his breath, now.

"The brat said that these tunnels connect up top, somehow," he muttered. "But how the fuck are we supposed to know which one goes upwards?"

"Tracks," Fai heard himself say, much to his surprise; his voice felt like it was coming from a thousand miles away. Kurogane swung around to look him full in the face, and the torch illuminated his astonished expression. "What?"

He blinked himself back into focus; the world seemed to stop moving as the light held still, although he was careful not to turn his head to the side, looking steadily into Kurogane's face. "They were moving ore to the other end of the tunnel at the top of the mine," he said. "So the main tunnel will be the one that has tracks and pulleys, for moving all that heavy material upwards."

Kurogane turned his head, his red eyes narrowing as he studied the floor of the tunnel, running off into the darkness. He nodded sharply in satisfaction. "This way, then," he said, and pulled Fai off once more.

Fai let him lead. He was dimly aware of more bends, more side tunnels, and then a lurching in his legs as the path they followed abruptly took on a grade. But at the same time, the world seemed to want to fade out at the edges, past the boundaries of Kurogane's torch. There was cold past the darkness, cold and a dark that went on forever, and in the cold and the dark voices were whispering to him.

Fai tried not to listen to him; he wanted to put his hands over his ears as he stumbled onwards, so he wouldn't have to listen. But Kurogane was still gripping his hand tightly, and he couldn't get his hand loose to do that. It didn't matter, anyway; even he'd been struck deaf he'd still hear them, the whispers. Hissing, hissing whispers.

He didn't listen to them, he didn't listen, but he still knew what they were saying. _Cursed,_ the voices whispered to him. Echoing sibilantly out of the side tunnels, like the abandoned mine had been infested with a thousand cold-blooded snakes. _Curssed._

The tunnels seemed to go on forever. After a time, they stopped seeing side passages; only the wood-and-metal track under their feet went steadily on, climbing upwards into the dark before abruptly switching back on itself and climbing the other direction. He was panting harshly, breath rasping in his chest; for once, he could hear Kurogane's breathing and knew the other man wasn't much better off. Sweat kept streaming down his face, the back of his neck; in the clammy cold air of the mine it only soaked his clothing through, chilling him further. The bubble of light that defined reality seemed to be getting dimmer, and narrower, the further they went.

Abruptly, Kurogane stopped, and Fai jerked to a halt next to him. He stared at the other man stupidly, trying to figure out what was going on. "What is it?" he finally managed, the words feeling like rasps in his throat.

"Torch is dying," Kurogane grunted. A cold wash of horror shot through Fai's body, and he stiffened up; Kurogane must have felt his hand clutch convulsively, because he glanced over at Fai's face. "Don't worry," he said firmly. "That's why I brought a second one."

Lighting the second torch from the first was a two-handed job, and Fai stood there like a wooden dummy, arm stiffly outstretched, while Kurogane shuffled the two, until he finally managed to get the second torch alight. For a moment the light doubled, and Fai felt his thoughts come into sharp clarity; his face flushed hot, and he dropped his hand, ashamed at the way he'd been behaving. But there were still the voices, just outside the edge of awareness. _Cursed._

"How far up do you think we've come?" Fai said, sounding almost normal; but there was nothing he could do to stop the edge of fear from creeping in.

Kurogane glanced at him, and said nothing for a moment; finally he answered, "I can't tell distances, underground. I'm sure we're going the right way, though."

Fai knew they were; there would be no reason for this track to keep on rising unless it were to connect with the fabled upper end of the tunnel. But that didn't tell him how close they were to their goal. "Let's keep going, then," he said. "Before the other torch burns out, too."

A short nod, and Kurogane started moving, too; he didn't offer his hand this time, but Fai followed anyway, pulled along by the light like an animal on a tether. It wasn't like he could have stayed behind, after all. _Demon, demon.... cursed._

When the burst of cold air hit Fai in the face like a blow, chilling the sweat on the back of his neck instantly, he thought at first he'd imagined it; but Kurogane also paused, pulling the torch down to shelter it. "Did you feel that, wizard?" Kurogane said, suppressed excitement in his voice. "A draft -- we have to be close to the upper end of the tunnel, if the air is moving this far down. It can't be much further now!"

They pushed ahead eagerly, and Fai was almost able to focus normally, with the promise of light and freedom just ahead. Up another switchback, and another; still no sign of daylight yet, although perhaps they had been in here long enough for night to fall. Fai didn't care, as long as they could be away from the cold stone walls, and the dark.

He was concentrating so hard on _not_ hearing the voices that he almost didn't hear the new noise at first, like a humming in his bones. It was another switchback before it grew too intense to ignore, like the buzz of conversation in another room, or the sound of an orchestra tuning up from behind a heavy curtain. He knew that sound, he was sure, but he just couldn't place it...

Kurogane looked back at him as he slowed, trying to identify the noise without the distraction of both their footfalls. "Come on, just a little further," he said impatiently, "we can rest at the top."

"Don't you hear it?" Fai said, puzzled, turning his head from side to side. He still couldn't hear it clearly, but he could pinpoint its direction now; it was coming from ahead of them, and above.

"Hear what?"

A noise that only he could hear -- let it never be said that Fai couldn't learn from his mistakes. He gasped for breath and held it, and put his hands up to his ears, blocking out Kurogane's impatient questions as he closed his eyes, focusing all his senses on that elusive sound...

Familiar, yes, it should be familiar, the sound of magic, of a dozen _familiar_ minds working in chorus. Blending together, joining forces, as they reached deep into the stones with their power, preparing --

"They're bringing down the pass!" he gasped, as his eyes flew open and his hands sprang away from his ears, reaching precariously for balance. "We have to get out of here, _now!_ "

"What? What's going on, wizard?!" For the first time, Kurogane was talking to his back as he lunged forward, gathering his flagging strength, pounding up the track into the darkness. The irrational, mesmerizing fear of the darkness could barely touch him now; not with the all-too-real dread of what was about to happen.

At least Kurogane followed. Fai did his best to explain, in between gasps for breath, as they both sprinted up the steep grades. "Wards on the mountainside -- years old --" he panted. "At the narrowest point -- steepest -- enough power will bring the whole thing down. Other wizards -- with the army -- "

"They're going to cause an avalanche?" Kurogane said, finally catching on. Fai nodded, grimly.

"Only way to stop the army -- bring the whole pass down on their heads. We aren't -- safe here --"

" _Shit,_ " Kurogane swore, and grabbing Fai's arm, he put on a new burst of speed.

They pounded around yet another switchback, and suddenly the floor under their feet leveled out; they were in a long, high gallery, with the feeling of space around them that the torchlight couldn't quite illuminate. The tracks ran on, straight and confident, and at the far distant end of the tunnel there was a glimmer of silver light.

"There!" Kurogane shouted, but Fai didn't have the breath to speak. The humming sound was rising to a crescendo, and he could hardly hear over it anyway.

Kurogane pulled them both forward, but it was too late, Fai knew it. A soundless flash of light played over his eyes, and then a noise that even Kurogane could hear started to grow from above them. The growling sound of rock cracking, breaking... slowly at first, then rising in a tumultuous roar as half of the mountainside came away.

Dirt and pebbles were starting to hail around them, making the footing slippery and unsteady, but Fai knew it was not going to stop there. He stared up at the ceiling, feeling the masses of rock above them beginning to shift and give way, and he knew they were not going to make it to the end of the tunnel in time.

Words formed on his tongue, tumbled out of his mouth, unheard in the tumult; he wanted to stop, to draw the circle on the ground, but Kurogane kept yanking him off balance, pulling him forward. He could feel the cloying fog of the _geas_ on his mind, pressing down on his magic, stumbling the words on his lips. This wasn't the task he'd been appointed for; this wasn't what he was supposed to be doing. He was supposed to kill Kurogane, not save him.

The light at the end of the tunnel vanished in a roar, and Fai yanked his arm out of Kurogane's grip and skidded to a stop, raising his arms above his head just as the rest of the world went out like a candle flame.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Windhome is a variation on 'Windam,' of course, the third Magical Knight to companion Rayearth and Seresu.
> 
> I am well aware of the fact that glaciers do not actually work like the one Fai described; a real glacier would take thousands of years, not hundreds, to cross so large of a distance. In addition, heavy blizzards with a large amount of snowfall could never occur in such close proximity to a real glacier. I originally wrote this shift of weather patterns as being the real reason for the famine in Ceres -- the glacier swallows up all the rain and moisture in the region, making them unable to grow crops -- but then realized I'd contradicted myself in the next chapter and took that section out.
> 
> You could propose that there's an in-story reason for the glacier to behave like it does; perhaps the huge concentration of magical and spiritual energy that Fei Wong Reed is amassing in the south is drawing heat out of the northern regions, resulting in the unnatural proliferation and growth of the glacier. Or we could simply say "a wizard did it" and leave it at that.


	10. In the Dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kurogane searches for an escape route, and Fai begins to lose his mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: This chapter contains graphic violent imagery, including a depiction of cannibalism. If you are easily disturbed by things of that nature, you may want to skip the first scene, or skip this chapter entirely.

  
It was cold. He was underground, surrounded on all side by cold and silent stone, and no light had ever reached this far under the earth. In the dead silence he could hear his own breaths echoing endlessly from the hard stone walls; high, short, shallow breaths. His hands scraped over the cold hard stone, rough calluses over rough cut rock.

Hungry. He was so hungry...

The sound of his breathing grew even louder in the closed space; short whimpers and pants as he scrabbled desperately further and further, seeking hands reaching but touching nothing. He needed... he needed to find... he was so hungry. He needed...

Only his breath echoed in the stone chamber; only his heartbeat pounded in the darkness. He was alone, and as his hands closed over something, stone-cold, stone-hard, but something that wasn't stone, Fai knew he'd found what he was looking for.

He was underground, and at the same time he was sitting in a warm, brightly lit dining chamber. Festive red hangings decorated the walls, brilliant stained glass windows fractured and sent back the light. He was seated in a chair that was just as rich, plush cushions over ornate carvings. Delicate china and brightly polished silverware graced the embroidered tablecloth; a beautiful goblet sat at his right hand, full of a wine so rich and dark it looked like blood.

All around him, people were talking, laughing, and he smiled and nodded in return to their comments, endlessly smiling. A line of chefs brought out the dishes, an endless parade of silver covered platters, and Fai's stomach growled. Hungry. He was so hungry. His hands tightened on the arms of his chair, hard and cold as stone, and his breathing echoed harshly in the small, silent chamber.

One of the chefs pushed the covered platter before him, removed the cover with a flourish, and Fai's smile froze on his face, like his skin would shatter at a touch. It was a severed head, the eyes gouged out, blood still leaking from the stump of the neck to pool on the platter beneath it. With the eyes gone, it took Fai a long moment to recognize the face as Captain Kurotsunagi.

He looked up, and other dishes were being unveiled. There was the arm and hand, perfectly roasted and carefully basted, still holding Ryuo's sword. There was princess Sakura, gutted and quartered on the large platter with fruits and flowers strewn delicately about her corpse. There was Kurogane, eyes rolled back and mouth stretched around a decoratively placed apple; out of his armor at last, and his bulky height had required the chefs to serve him on two seperate platters.

All around him the guests laughed and chattered, smiling, endlessly smiling. He looked up at the head chef and it was Ashura, smiling so gently at him, nodding, encouraging him to eat. The chef moved forward and slid one dish closer to him than the others. A child, drawn into a tight frog-like curl on the center of the gleaming silver platter, wild blond hair spread out around him like an offering. Ashura smiled and nodded, and all around him, the banquet guests laughed.

Emptiness pulsed inside him, pulling and sucking out from his stomach to a ravening pain that encompassed all his limbs, and he was so hungry --

His breath echoed around the small chamber, no light, no heat, no water, no food, and his hands closed over dirty cloth, around an arm as cold and hard as the stone, but was not stone. And in a beautiful banquet chamber, he raised the flesh of his brother to his lips, and bit down.

  
**

  
Fai came awake out of the nightmare with a strangled scream in his throat and tears in his eyes. For several long, thundering beats of his heart he did not know where he was or how he'd come to be there; it was cold, and dark, and dim shadows of stone wavered in his vision. His head hurt, and he could not seem to move his arm and leg at all. He was back there again, he'd never left, everything else had been a dream, only the nightmare was real --

If there was no light, how could he see the stones?

Bile stirred in his throat, and he struggled to take long, deep breaths, and swallow against it. Memory was returning in a discordant rush, and he was certain that Kurogane would not want him to waste their precious supply of water by vomiting.

"Hey. You awake?" The shadows shifted, moved; as Kurogane stood up and turned around Fai caught a glimpse of the source of it, a tiny fire crackling against the stone. It illuminated the space in which they were trapped, if barely; fallen, splintered timbers braced against a rush of broken black stones, creating a little bubble of safety in the devastation.

Safety, yes -- but now they were trapped here, with no way out. Fai felt laughter bubbling in his chest, hysterical and unreasoning, as he considered their situation. He let his eyes fall closed, concentrating on the steady rhythm of inhaling and exhaling.

"What happened?" Fai asked. He had a feeling like he should already know the answer to that, but the link between cause and effect seemed to dance tantalizingly out of reach just now.

Kurogane snorted. "A mountain fell on us."

"Oh," Fai said. That explained some things, like why it was so dark and where all the rocks came from. But not everything, such as why reality seemed so remote or hazy, nor why his right arm screamed in agony every time he tried to use it. More disconcertingly, why he could only seem to move it an inch or two before it seemed to be stopped by something. "Why can't I move my arm?"

"Because a mountain fell on us, idiot." Kurogane stood up, outline seeming to flare and shrink against the light, and came over to crouch next to him. "Your arm's broken, and your leg. I splinted you up the best I could, but you won't be going anywhere on it anytime soon."

"Oh." He didn't quite understand Kurogane's concern for not being able to walk on it, considering that right now there was nowhere to go anyway.

Kurogane's hands were on him, strong hard fingers brushing over his leg and his arm, checking that the splints were still in place. Then the fingers moved up to his chin, forcing his face to tilt upwards. The change of angle made him dizzy; he could see the light of the fire, almost blinding him, but Kurogane was only a dark shadow. He couldn't see the color of Kurogane's eyes at all, and for a moment he felt like he was falling.

Kurogane finished by saying, "You're just lucky that your head didn't break like your arm and leg did."

A month ago Fai would not have been able to identify the thread of emotion, of buried fear and concern and protectiveness, in Kurogane's voice; a day ago he would have been unable to accept it. Now, though, it just reminded him that he wasn't the only one who could be hurt. "What about you? Aren't you injured?" Fai asked, frowning. He remembered the rockfall now, dimly; remembered wanting to protect Kurogane from it, trying to protect him. But he wasn't at all sure he'd succeeded; he'd never managed to protect anything else in his life, after all.

"Me? I'm fine," Kurogane snorted, and dropped his hands away from Fai's face. He regretted the loss of touch, his skin feeling cold where Kurogane's fingers had been. "A little knocked around, but nothing worse. _I_ was wearing armor, unlike a certain mage, who decided to take his off to climb."

His thoughts seemed fuzzy, hard to grasp, and it took time and patience to sort through them. At last he managed to identify what was bothering him about that light. "Should you have started that? That fire, I mean," he said. "Fire needs air to live, and so do we. It'll burn up all the good air if you let it..."

"I know that," Kurogane said with some irritation. "I'm not stupid. I felt a draft coming through the rockfall over there, although I couldn't find where it was coming from. We can keep the fire going as long as there are things to burn. We might still get crushed by an aftershock, freeze to death when the fire dies, or die of hunger or thirst before anyone finds us, but we won't smother."

Fai had to laugh, albeit weakly, at Kurogane's litany of gloom. "It won't come to that. I hope."

"What, you think someone _is_ going to find us?" Kurogane's voice was colored by skepticism.

"Someone might." It took Fai a few minutes to sort out his thoughts, but at last he was able to remember why. "It depends on who won the battle, out there. If my people are still in charge, then the wizards will be able to sense me, although it may take some time for them to pin down my location, or to dig that way through the rockfall." Assuming that they'd spare the effort to do that; assuming that Ashura wasn't still angry with him for failing to kill Kurogane. "If Nihon has taken control of the pass, we'll probably die down here."

"Speak for yourself," Kurogane growled. "I don't have any intention of dying here -- or of waiting for someone else to get their ass in gear and rescue us, either. I'm going to find a way out through that rockslide."

"Okay," Fai said agreeably, and closed his eyes. He couldn't really argue Kurogane out of that plan, and he was too sleepy to try.

The lingering horror of the nightmare wouldn't let him doze, however, and he lay blinking slowly, watching the shadows shift as Kurogane moved around the walls of their little chamber, sometimes stooping or stretching, testing the rocks. He made his full way around the little chamber once, before coming back to sit between the little fire and Fai with a disgusted sigh.

Fai ventured, "Can you just... you know, blast your way out? With those special sword-moves that you do?"

Kurogane made a noise of disgust, and turned away from the pile of loose shale. "I would if I could, but I lost hold of both of my swords in the cave-in. They're probably buried back along the hallway somewhere."

"Oh." Fai considered this. "Can't you just do them anyway?" he said doubtfully. While having a physical item to act as a focus for one's magic was often very helpful, in a pinch one could always do without.

Kurogane gave him an odd look. "Of course not. How am I supposed to do sword moves without a sword?"

"Maybe you could just imagine the sword," Fai suggested helpfully.

"Maybe I could, if I were as crazy as you."

"Mm." Fai felt the smile slide off his face. Maybe he really was crazy, a nightmare voice whispered from the back of his mind. Maybe he was just cursed.

Kurogane was watching him closely, Fai realized, and knew that he hadn't missed the lack of response. He made an effort to summon the smile again, although he didn't think it was really fooling anyone. "What?"

Kurogane hesitated, then said, "You're taking... all this... awfully calmly."

"What, being buried alive?" Fai's mouth twitched.

"Well, yeah. Given how much you were freaking out before, I was wor... well, I didn't know how you'd take it. But I didn't think you'd be quite this laid-back."

Fai considered this. "There's not much point to being afraid now, is there," he heard himself say, to his own surprise. "Fear is... fear is a reaction to help you act. To run away, or fight back. But it's too late, isn't it? There's no escaping from here, and there's nothing to fight. So what's the point of being afraid?"

"I guess," Kurogane grunted, and rose to his feet again.

 _And besides,_ Fai thought, _I always knew I'd end up back here, someday._

**

  
With no sun and no moon to mark the passing of the day, time in their underground prison seemed to crawl on interminably. Kurogane prowled the edges of the rockfall, relentlessly searching for a weak point he could use to dig their way out. He spent what seemed like endless hours studying the fall of the stones and rotted timbers against each other, trying to determine what rocks could be moved without bringing the whole mess down on their heads. It was futile, though; even when he threw all his considerable strength and weight against the stones, they refused to budge, wedged tight by immeasurable weight crushing from above.

Breathing hard and fast from his exertions, Kurogane sat down heavily beside the fire, and surveyed his companion. Fai's halting conversation had trailed off into silence some time ago, and he seemed to be asleep. Or unconscious. Either way, Kurogane saw no hurry to wake him.

Exhausted by his struggle with the rocks, Kurogane drifted into sleep for another long, uneasy, markless time. When he awoke, his hand was flexing hungrily for the sword that was no longer in his grasp.

The wizard's suggestion from earlier floated through his mind, and Kurogane hesitated, then extended his hand and arm as though the sword were still in it. _Imagine_ a sword? At the time, he'd rightfully dismissed it as nonsense, but... really, what else was there to try?

Feeling a little ridiculous, he dropped into his stance, and moved through the patterns of a kata. He took a deep breath and focused his ki, letting all his anger and fear and frustration come out of their tight suppression, flowing through his veins like honey. He went through the motions of a strike, the energy and momentum flowing in a circle to focus on a point in front of him; blast outwards, towards the hallway that lead to freedom... " _Senryuu hikogen_!"

Nothing happened. Kurogane's frustration peaked, along with a feeling of foolishness. With no sword, no length of steel along which to channel the fire, how was he supposed to complete the move? It was ridiculous. He vented an exasperated sigh and dropped out of the stance, turning to find the wizard's eyes open, watching him.

Caught between frustration and embarrassment, he snarled, "Look, can't your magic do _anything_ useful? Clear away the rocks, send a message for help, conjure water out of the air, anything at all?"

Fai shook his head slowly from side to side, a small, wistful smile lingering on his lips. "Sorry, no."

"I knew it." Kurogane plopped back onto the stone floor and crossed his arms over his chest, glaring into the darkness. "What's the use of even having it, then?"

"Sometimes I wonder," Fai said, in a voice so soft it was almost a whisper.

"You were the one who decided to become a magician, instead of doing something useful with your life," Kurogane retorted.

"It was what King Ashura wanted of me," Fai admitted. "And... I wanted it for myself, as well. I guess you could say I wanted power... but more than anything, I wanted to learn. I wanted to understand. I hoped that magic could lead me to the truth."

"And doesn't it?"

Fai let out a long breath, not quite a sigh. "I... don't know. Magic itself can't lie. It's against its nature. But just because it doesn't lie, doesn't mean it always tells the truth, either."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Kurogane said scornfully. "Either something's true, or it isn't."

"An incomplete truth can be as bad as a lie, sometimes," Fai said. "And what do you do if the magic shows two different things, two opposite things, and both of them are true?"

"Then one of them must be lying," Kurogane reasoned.

Fai sighed, but for a long moment didn't say anything. Kurogane eyed the piles of loose shale on the far wall, and considered whether his swords might be buried under them.

When Fai spoke again, his voice was low and drifting. "Someone, we always thought Nihon, has been trying to get a spy inside our court for years. That's why we have the border wards, detection spells for any hostile magics. Two years ago, the guards brought a man to our castle, a traveler. He wasn't from Nihon; he was a scholar, he said, traveling from far away. We don't get very many outsiders... They had arrested him because the wards had sensed a spy spell when he crossed them."

Kurogane stiffened as a bolt of recognition shot through him, at Fai's drifting tale. Surely it was a coincidence -- but how many traveling scholars could have been arrested in Ceres, two years ago?

"He didn't even try to deny it -- being a wizard spy. He confessed to everything, there could be no doubt. And yet..."

For a long moment, there was silence, until finally Kurogane prompted him to continue. "And?"

"They brought me in, to examine him. There were no spells on him. Nothing! No magic residue at all. He himself had no magic potential. As far as I could determine, with every means I could try, he was just an ordinary man!"

Fai sighed. "But... something set off the border wards, without question. Two different spells, both told the truth, but they both said opposite things. How can I know which was right?"

Kurogane said, keeping his voice as casual and unemotional as possible, "What happened to the man?"

"Ashura executed him." Fai stared into the darkness.

There could be no doubt; the traveling stranger could only have been Syaoran's father. Kurogane bared his teeth in a snarl. "And you call my people barbarians."

"What else could he do? The man had declared himself an enemy of Ceres." Fai's hand balled into a fist, he drew a breath. "But it was so unnecessary! There was no proof, no evidence of wrongdoing at all. If he was so strong a wizard as to somehow completely fool me -- then how could the wards sense him in the first place? And if he truly was innocent -- then why would he lie?"

Kurogane considered pointing out the obvious answer -- that the man had been covering for the _real_ spy -- before dismissing the idea. He'd known Syaoran for years, and while the boy certainly had reason to hate Ceres, he was certainly no one's spy, and there was nothing magical about him at all.

Fai was still talking, his rambling words growing more slurred, less sensical. "All the things I can see... but I couldn't see the truth when it really mattered, and a man died for it. Why does that happen? Why is it that no matter what I choose, I make other people unhappy? Why always..."

His words trailed off into silence, and Kurogane stared at him uneasily. It was hard to tell in the firelight, but he thought that Fai's skin was clammy, and his breathing was shallow and fast. No doubt about it, the wizard was getting worse.

  
**

Another endless night crawled past. Kurogane made increasingly frenetic passes around their underground prison, alternating searching for his swords with searching for a way out; but the rocks refused to budge even when he employed Ginryuu's empty scabbard as a lever against them. It was rather daunting; he would have expected that at least some of the smaller stones would shift, but it was as if the entire mass of stone was frozen in place. Eventually, the futile efforts left his hands tingling and numb, and he stopped for another rest, and to put some serious thought into their options.

He still hadn't given up the possibility of escape, but he had to admit that it was getting lower and lower on the list of probable outcomes. As for rescue, he still didn't have much hope in Fai's wizard friends; putting any kind of faith in magic at all had not worked out for them so far, let alone putting faith in one's enemies. Crossing off those two options led him to consider the very real possibility that they would both die in here.

In an ultimate sense, he wasn't too bothered by the prospect. There were a lot of ways to die in this world, and most of them were gruesomely unpleasant, compared to only a bare few that could be considered peaceful. Freezing or starvation did not particularly appeal to him, as deaths went, but they did have the advantage of not having his soul ripped out to feed demons, which had been a higher-than-average possibility in his line of work.

No, he couldn't say he was enthusiastic about the idea, but he wasn't particularly afraid, either. For some reason, the only thought that upset him was that he wouldn't be able to save Fai.

It seemed ridiculous, that he should be so worried about a man who'd tried to kill him in his sleep not two weeks before, but Kurogane didn't blame Fai for that any more. It was obvious that he hadn't wanted to do it, that he had been forced into doing it by magical compulsions, and that offended Kurogane's sensibilities deeply.

Kurogane had seen the haunted look on Fai's face, when he'd spoken of his king; seen the naked terror in his eyes, when Kurogane had proposed fighting him. Kurogane didn't think much of kings that ruled by terrorizing their subjects, by fitting them with magical leashes and sending them out to do their dirty work for them. Kurogane intended to have a lengthy discussion with this King Ashura about how he treated his subjects; ideally, a sharp and pointy discussion, too.

It just felt natural to care for Fai, to worry about his well-being and want to protect him. For a while he had assumed that it was Fai's resemblence to a woman which stirred these misplaced, protective feelings towards him, but he knew better now; weeks of traveling and fighting by his side had left him with no illusions of what the magician was capable of.

He didn't want to protect Fai because he thought Fai was weak, but because it hurt him to see the silly mage hurting. And he got hurt so easily, over such foolish things, even feeling guilty about killing in self-defense men who'd tried in all earnestness to kill him first. How he'd survived this long in the world Kurogane still had no idea, but clearly he needed someone to look after him and keep him out of trouble, and obviously no one in his home country was capable of doing it, or Fai wouldn't be such a wreck now.

It was hard to mark time, but the insistent demands of his body told Kurogane that they'd been under the stone for at least a day, and hadn't eaten anything since at least morning of the first day, before descending the path. He left off the futile search for a way out and instead turned to his small bundle of supplies and belongings that was all he'd carried with him off the horse. Under his breath, he cursed the half-blood urchins who had made off with the majority of their food -- and Fai, for convincing him to go along with it -- but there was no recovering it now.

They did have a decent amount of water, at least. But of the food, they were left with a few handfuls of meat jerky, a collection of walnuts that Fai had picked up before they'd crossed the treeline. Not more than two days' food, all together.

A more immediate problem was going to be how he could get the mage to eat, since he'd been drifting in and out of consciousness since the rockfall. Kurogane considered the mechanics; eventually he decided to keep the nuts for himself, and do his best with their limited supplies to boil the meat into a sort of broth, that he thought Fai could manage. This also had the advantage of getting food and water into him at the same time, or would, if he could get it down him.

"Here." Fai's eyes flickered open as Kurogane came and sat beside him; the mage's eyes were dilated in the low light, only a thin rim of blue showing around the pupil. His chest heaved and his nostrils flared as he smelled the food, and he blinked into some sort of focus, attempting to sit up a little straighter against the rocks. "You should at least try to eat. Well, drink."

"What is this, breakfast in bed?" he whispered, and Kurogane spared him a brief smile at the attempted humor.

"I did the math," Kurogane said. "We have enough water to last us for at least a week. If we make the food last as long as possible, it'll probably be dead even heat between when we run out of water and when we starve to death."

"So cheerful," Fai said with a twisted grin, but then he sighed and his eyes fluttered shut again. "I'm sorry -- that I made you give our supplies to those... children. I never thought..."

Kurogane didn't really have anything to say to that; it had been a mistake, but neither of them could have foreseen becoming trapped so close to their destination. Instead, he said, "This is yours. I've already eaten mine."

Fai didn't respond, and for a moment Kurogane worried that he'd blacked out again, before angry impatience shouldered that feeling aside. This was just more of Fai being stubborn and stupid. "If you let it get cold, it'll be vile," he prodded him, "and I'm _not_ going to cook it again for you."

"Kurogane," Fai said, eyes still closed, and his voice was barely over a whisper. "We've got to be realistic. We don't know when help is going to arrive. If only one of us is going to make it out of here... then maybe you shouldn't waste your supplies on me."

"You aren't going to --" Kurogane broke off, and he couldn't help but glare upwards, as though magically he could penetrate the layers of rock above them and appeal to the heavens for an answer. He was tired, he was aching and hungry, he did not have the patience and he did not have the _endurance_ to go over the same moronic fight with Fai _again._

"I just don't want you to waste what you have," Fai murmured. "I don't want to --"

"If you don't drink this in the next five minutes," Kurogane said, holding on to his calm with both hands, "I'm going to pour it out on the floor. Then it really _will_ be wasted."

Fai started a bit, his eyes opening wide as he looked at Kurogane in shock and disbelief. Kurogane held his gaze, conveying with his expression just how serious he was. Fai's mouth opened as if to argue further, then all at once he gave up. "All right," he said, with a tiny little shrug of his unbroken shoulder.

Since it was Fai's right arm that was broken, and his left was none too steady, Kurogane had to help Fai drink the broth out of the bowl; but he counted it as a victory all the same.

"Thank you, Kurogane," Fai said. "You're a good man."

Kurogane said nothing; he felt a pang of irritation and hurt whenever Fai called him by his whole name, instead of one of the stupid nicknames Fai had always plagued him with. Those nicknames felt like a relic from another life now, and one he missed with a longing that was almost painful in its intensity.

Instead, awkwardly, Kurogane reached out and took Fai's hand; the wizard's skin was cold.

Fai smiled, sweetly, slowly; it was an expression that made Kurogane's breath catch. "It's all right," Fai murmured, and his fingers squeezed weakly against Kurogane's palm. "We'll get out of here. We'll find away to escape. Don't be afraid."

"I wasn't the one who was afraid, was I?" Kurogane pointed out.

Fai continued as if he hadn't spoken. "If we can get out, I can use magic," he said. "We'll look out for each other. My magic is even more powerful than the King's. He won't be able to beat us, as long as we're together."

Kurogane tensed, his senses coming to full alert. "The King? I thought you were the one who said that you couldn't disobey the king."

"We can get out," Fai said, his voice in a near-whisper as though sharing a secret. His eyes were all black now, the pupils dilated to hide even the smallest hint of blue. "We'll go to some other country, someplace far away. Nothing will separate us any more, I promise."

Kurogane's throat was dry, at the surge of unexpected hope that Fai's confidences gave him. His thoughts spun wildly -- if they could get free from here, run from Fai's dreaded king Ashura, run away from Kendappa... from Tomoyo. Free from demons and battlegrounds and duties and loyalties that would tear them apart. Free...?

He cleared his throat. "Aren't you assuming an awful lot, there?"

Fai just smiled, his eyes black, the strength in his fingers feverish. "We'll be together, Fai. We'll do it someday, I swear."

Kurogane stared at Fai in shock, felt the warmth of moments before suddenly draining away into dread, leaving him feeling sick and cold. Those words, those eyes -- whatever the wizard was saying, and whatever he was seeing, it wasn't reality.

"Don't be afraid of the dark, Fai," the other man whispered, his voice slurring as his eyelids drooped. "You aren't alone. I'm here."

But as his breathing leveled off into sleep, leaving Kurogane alone in the shifting firelight, he felt very alone indeed.

  
**

Fai was wrapped in every blanket or coat they'd brought with them on the last hike, and moved as close to their fire as Kurogane dared without actually setting something on fire. It didn't seem to be doing any good, though -- the fire's heat spread too quickly into the cold air of the stone room, and all the blankets and coats in the world couldn't seem to stop the chill that was creeping over Fai.

Kurogane was no doctor. He knew, at best, a rough kind of field medicine; just enough to patch himself up after a bad fight, at least long enough to get back to the city where he could get real treatment. He knew how to stop bleeding, to set broken bones and keep them braced, to keep wounds clean so that the demon filth couldn't poison them. He knew that keeping warm was important, that wet chills could be dangerous, and that you had to keep your body properly fueled with food and water to keep your strength up.

But there was a lot he knew he didn't understand, about things that could break and bleed inside where you couldn't staunch or bandage them, about fevers and chills, about subtle wounds to the head that could worsen over the course of days. Whatever was afflicting Fai now, it was chilling him down more than the cold air and stone could account for, stealing his heat and his color and stifling his breathing. And whatever inside his head was broken, Kurogane couldn't fix it. For all his strength and prowess, this was a demon he couldn't fight.

Fai had raved for hours, after that first frightening break with reality. It was all the more unnerving for the casual, conversational tone of his voice; Kurogane would say something, and Fai would reply as though continuing a conversation, but what he said made no sense.

Eventually, the words had stopped being ones that Kurogane could understand; whether he had switched to some secret language or speaking simple gibberish Kurogane didn't know, but there was one word he had no trouble making out. _Fai. Fai._ The wizard called out his own name to some unknown, unseen presence, for all the world like he was calling to someone.

After hours passed in the darkness and the cold, he'd wound down into silence. And he was silent now.

Kurogane reached down to touch his neck, checked his pulse again; it was rapid and shallow, like his breathing, more like the beating of a rabbit's heart than a man's. His skin was cold and clammy under Kurogane's fingers, his face wracked with some unconscious strain, and he mumbled a little and turned his face towards the heat. The color of his lips had gone beyond pale into blue-gray and Kurogane brushed his hand over those too, feeling a powerful urge to drive the chill away. He leaned forward, almost in a trance, half-hypnotized by the idea of touching his lips to Fai's.

But this was no fairy-tale, no enchanted sleep to be broken with a kiss, and anyway Kurogane was no prince. He sighed and pulled away with a pang of regret, brushing his hand over the pale blond hair. The fine, soft strands were so caked with sweat and dust that they had matted over, and felt under his hand like nothing so much as feathers.

It seemed unfair, somehow, that he'd only been able to come so close to Fai, to touch him with such intimacy, when Fai was gravely injured, not even all there in the head. They'd had all the time in the world out there on the trail, but Kurogane had guarded his privacy and reserve closely. Always keeping a distance from the other man, although as it turned out, for all the wrong reasons. Hadn't realized what Fai meant to him because he hadn't _wanted_ to realize, hadn't let himself think about it.

He realized now, much too late, that he wanted Fai in his life, didn't want to lose him. Wherever he went from here, he wanted Fai's presence by his side; his bright laugh, his easy chatter, his quick wit, his lithe, elegant form and bright blue eyes.

He was such a fool. All the arguments and excuses he'd made to himself about Fai's motivations were nothing more than that, excuses to justify the decision he'd already come to. He'd already forgiven Fai with no conscious thought on his part. He couldn't hate this man, even if he wanted to, even if he knew he should.

His life would go on without Fai, he had no doubts about that. But he would be going on to a world drained of color and meaning, bound by the narrow, dark horizons of an endless cycle of loneliness and violence. Somewhere in there, Fai had become as precious to him as his duties, as his princess, as his revenge. Fai had come to _matter_ to him.

And Fai was dying.

And there was nothing Kurogane could do to save him.

He sat down before the dim warmth of their tiny fire, and covered his face with his hands.

  
**

  
What roused him out of his despair was not so much a sound as a vibration.

Kurogane raised his head from his hands, staring at the dark rocks, listening intently. After a moment, he was sure he heard it again; a tap-tap rhythm, followed by a scraping sound.

Jumping up, he strode to the stone wall and pressed his bare hands against it, ignoring the biting tingle of the cold against his skin. After a few minutes, it came against, a palpable vibration against his hands. Again the impacts started, continued for a few moments, then trailed off in a faint shuffle.

Kurogane drew in a deep breath, and slammed against the wall with all his strength. "HEY!" he shouted, wincing slightly as the crowded stone walls echoed his voice back at him. "HEY! IN HERE! IS ANYONE OUT THERE?"

There were a few minutes of silence, then a series of shuffling thumps against the wall, growing slightly closer and louder. Was that a human voice, coming faintly through the stone, or just his imagination? Kurogane slammed against the wall again, then stepped back, grabbed Ginryuu's empty scabbard, and used it as a hammer. The sound of the blow shook the small chamber, and Kurogane had a moment's apprehension, but not a rock budged. "IN HERE!"

Another few minutes of cracking and scraping noises, and this time, the sound of a human voice was unmistakable, although he still couldn't make out the words through the muffling rock.

"There are two of us in here!" he called through the rock. "One of us needs a doctor! Can you get us out?"

A pause, and then more calling, this time in a reassuring tone; he could definitely make out the word 'yes.' Satisfied, he struck the wall with the scabbard one more time to mark their location, then stepped back and waited.

It took ages. Kurogane stood jittering, listening to the noises from outside. There was an endless series of noises from the corridor outside, thumps and rustling and the cracking of stone, but no matter how much closer the noises seemed to get, there still seemed to be farther for them to go. Kurogane alternated between pacing the fire and obsessively checking on Fai's condition -- he was no worse, but no better, either, and it would be just like the man to die on him right when help was finally at hand.

The voices stopped on what felt like just the other side of the wall; he could hear the murmurings of several male voices now, consulting with each other. He was tempted to call out to them again, encourage them to hurry up already, but he managed to rein in his impatience and stood fuming.

When they finally broke through the last wall, Kurogane was expecting a few stones to fall out of a weak spot in the wall, creating a hole they could enlarge from both sides. At most, he was expecting to have a hole blasted in the wall, and had carefully placed himself between any possible flying shrapnel and Fai. But he was definitely not expecting what actually happened, which was for the entire north wall to shimmer like the air in high summer, and then abruptly dissolve into sand.

The fall of the sand rose a huge dust cloud in the cavern, and Kurogane had to cover his mouth to keep from suffocating while he coughed. At least he heard some mirrored coughing from the other side of the dust cloud, which made him feel marginally better. He saw several figures moving in the tunnel that had suddenly opened up in front of him, and strode forward before the sand had finished sliding over itself on the rock floor. "About time! What -- " he snarled, before coughing again.

When he stepped out of the other side of the dust cloud, he stumbled; he'd badly underestimated just how long he'd been in the subterranean darkness, and his eyes burned painfully from the silver light flooding in from in front of him. The far end of the tunnel, he realized, blinking watering eyes against the stabbing light. He saw a number of figures moving around, silhouetted against the dust and light, and rounded on one of them.

"What took you so damn long?" he said, voice hoarse from the dust and shouting. "Is one of you idiots a doctor? My friend is injured, and he needs --"

He stopped when he realized that they were all staring at him, and straightened up, looking around him more slowly.

There were six men arrayed in the tunnel before him. They were easy to see against the dark stone of the rock because they had pale skin and light hair, and they were wearing white and blue robes, heavily furred and glittering with a wealth of silver decorations. Although the cut and style varied from one to another, there was no mistaking the full regalia version of the white-and-blue robe he'd seen only once before; on Fai, the first time they'd met.

The wizards were staring at him; their faces were still blurred to his eyes, but he didn't need an interpretor to detect the astonishment, outrage and hostility directed his way. None of them moved, however, or responded to his question; he realized they were all deferring to the seventh man, taller and more imposing in dark brown and sable robes that nearly matched the dark native stone.

He'd felt this pressure, this imposing presence, many times before when taking audience at court with Amaterasu and Tomoyo. But he'd never felt it so cold, so alien, or so hostile; and when Kurogane was able to focus against the light at last, he realized that he was standing face to face with the King of Ceres.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I started out by saying that Fai's left arm and leg were broken, but then in the next scene had Kurogane feeding Fai because his dominant arm was broken. Oops! Maybe Fai is a leftie?


	11. Second Meetings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Ashura decides to spare Kurogane's life, and Kurogane gets a shock about Fai's true identity.

Kurogane instinctively went for his sword, only to halt with the realization that not only were his weapons still buried under the rockfall somewhere behind them, but he was thoroughly surrounded and outnumbered. Apart from the wizards -- and Kurogane had well learned the peril of underestimating a wizard -- now that his eyes were adjusted to the light, he saw a dozen shorter, more darkly dressed men in military uniform, all of them armed with halberds. Clearly, Ceres had sent some serious firepower after their stray mage. All of them wore stances and expressions that showed that they knew exactly how to use their weapons.

The tip of something sharp scraped over his backplate, creeping up to rest a point of ice against the back of his neck. Kurogane mouthed a silent curse to himself and slowly straightened from his fighting stance, holding his hands carefully away from his body with his palms open.

No one had yet moved, waiting for orders from their king, who was watching Kurogane with a cold stone-hard expression. Kurogane took a breath and said, slowly and carefully, "Do you have a doctor with you? My friend was injured in the cave-in, and he needs help."

"Ran," the king called without moving his eyes from Kurogane's face; one of the men in blue and white stepped forward. The king rattled off a string of instructions in a hard voice, an odd combination of liquid syllables and sharp, angry inflection.

Kurogane felt disoriented for a moment before he realized that the king was not speaking the language of Nihon. In fact, it suddenly clicked into place, it hadn't just been the baffling of the stone that had kept him from understanding the voices earlier; they had been speaking the same foreign tongue as the king.

 _But the wizard always spoke my language!_ he thought angrily. _What's going on here?_

The wizard being addressed bowed, and then he and two of the halberd-wielding soldiers disappeared into the collapsed part of the tunnel behind them. Kurogane looked slowly around, moving his head as little as possible. Judging by the angle of the sun coming in the tunnel, it was late afternoon, although he couldn't have said of what day.

After a few moments, the wizard reappeared from the cave-in, a white blur in Kurogane's peripheral vision. He gave Kurogane an odd look as he passed by him to the king's side, and spent several minutes speaking in a hushed tone to his ear.

The king responded in the same language, his tone surprised; whatever reply he received made him glance sharply at Kurogane, his gaze now more speculating than hostile.

After a few more moments of incomprehensible conversation, the king lifted his head, looked around at the surrounding guards and wizards, and gave a command to the room at large; with some exclamations of surprise, they stood down. Kurogane breathed easier as the pressure on the back of his neck eased, and took the opportunity to look around.

The stone gallery extended a few more hundred paces before opening out onto a stone path beyond; it looked like there had been several other falls of rock between them and the entrance which had been cleared away. More and more soldiers, and another white-clad wizard, were moving around the entranceway; Kurogane's already dismal calculations of the odds against him sank even lower.

He was more surprised than any of them when the king turned back to him and said with a distinct but clear accent, "So it is you who has taken charge of my lost sheep."

Kurogane couldn't help a small double-take. "Er -- you speak _nihongo_?" he blurted out.

The king gave him a wintry little smile. "It would be very careless of us, would it not? To have no knowledge of the language of such a close, aggressive and dangerous neighbor. I insist that all members of my court learn to speak it."

The king's tone left Kurogane feeling like he'd been rebuked somehow, but the other man pushed on. "I had heard much about Nihon's formidable warrior-mages. Now I am privileged to meet one at last. Your name?"

"Kurogane," he replied stiffly, deciding not to contest the 'mage' part of it right now. "Kurogane Demon-Queller. Lord of Suwa." He didn't normally use his official title, let alone the dead rank of his homeland, but he was feeling deeply in over his head and wanted all the weight he could throw around right now.

If the king was impressed, he didn't show it. He merely nodded acknowledgment, his attention already visibly on other things. "A storm is coming soon. You will accompany us to the castle of Ruval... as a guest."

'Guest' was the Ceres word for 'prisoner of war,' it seemed, but at the moment it looked like Kurogane had no choice; and anyway it was better than being killed on the spot. "All right," he said grudgingly.

Another small, cold smile. "So glad you approve," the king said with withering irony, then turned away towards the dark end of the tunnel, visibly dismissing Kurogane from his attention.

Kurogane snapped his mouth on his next retort, and glared around at anyone who had been listening. Most of the soldiers and wizards, however, seemed to be paying no attention to him now that his fate had been decided; they were coming and going, chattering busily to each other in their own tongue.

No one tried to stop him when he moved back towards the cave-in. King Ashura might have decided on a whim to spare him, at least for now, but that was no guarantee that he'd be equally lenient towards Fai. Kurogane was damned if he'd let the king terrorize his friend while he was here to prevent it.

He stopped at the entrance to the cave-in. Ashura and two wizards were enough to fill up the small space by themselves; there would not be room for him as well without some serious crowding. The dust from the opening of the wall had mostly settled by now, and the small space was being lit by an silver-white glow emanating from the end of one of the wizards' staff. The light made the small space seem eerie and unfamiliar, completely washing out the dim red light of the dying fire, and the pallor it cast over Fai made him look even worse than before.

Seized with a sudden anxiety for his friend, Kurogane glared at Ashura as the man walked past the fire. He knelt beside Fai, one gloved hand reaching out to touch Fai's throat, then his forehead, and Kurogane almost snapped at him to keep his damn hands to himself. If the bastard raised his hand the wrong way --

Fai's eyes were still closed, but his face was not slack with unconsciousness; the strain from before was even more evident now, and long shivers were periodically racking his frame even through the layers of insulating cloth. The king sighed, and picked up Fai's unbroken arm, folding his hand in his own. "Fai," he said, quietly but with a strong, deep note of command. " _Malchik moy_ , Fai."

After a moment, Fai's eyes fluttered open, and slowly came into focus, tracking up to Ashura's face. He gasped, suddenly and deeply, like a drowning man who had unexpectedly struck air; his chest heaved as he sucked in breath after breath, and his hand clutched fiercely at Ashura's like a lifeline. "My lord?" he said faintly. "King Ashura!"

"Yes, I found you, my boy," Ashura said, and smiled; a gentle smile that completely transformed his face from the cold and distant visage it had been before. His free hand reached out and smoothed Fai's hair back from his face, cupped his jaw. "I've come to take you away from here."

Fai's expression was like a dawning sunrise, so much hope and relief and adoration that it was almost blinding to look at, and Kurogane felt like he'd been punched in the stomach.

A cascade of conflicting thoughts and feelings ran through him. Fai had never looked at _him_ like that. This wasn't what he'd been expecting. He'd thought that Fai was terrified of Ashura, abused by him, not --

Before he could get hold of himself, make sense of what was and what should be, one of the wizards was in his face, blocking his vision of Ashura and Fai together. "Lord Kurogane, you should move away from here," the wizard said, in accented but polite _nihongo._ "The ceiling is very not stable, it may collapse shortly."

"No --" Kurogane said, confused; he looked past the man's shoulder, but Ashura's voice and Fai's had sunk into murmurs, and he could no longer make out the conversation. "What about my friend? If it's dangerous you have to move him too --"

"We will move him when we can take over," the man said, somewhat cryptically. "But you should move away from here, to the outside."

Somehow, the man was crowding him away from the cave-in, back towards the brightly-lit end of the stone corridor. Kurogane made another attempt to get past him, but was neatly blocked by the staff. Kurogane eyed that staff with loathing, and the wizard with scarcely any less; he could certainly force his way past, but somehow he didn't think the soldiers in the cave would like that. Instead, he tried guile. "Wait -- all my gear is in the cave there. I have to get it."

A second, shorter blue-clad man had appeared to back up the first, who turned to him and said something in their own language. The second wizard vanished, and reappeared after a few minutes carrying the packs that held all the remnants of his and Fai's gear.

"There are your things," the first wizard said politely. "You should move to the outside now."

Kurogane dug in his heels. "My swords," he said. "They're still in there somewhere. I won't leave without them."

The second wizard looked at him; his Japanese was considerably less formal, but still perfectly intelligible. "I didn't see swords," he said.

"They're buried under the rock somewhere," Kurogane said; truth be told, he'd already given them up for lost, but if he could use them as a delaying tactic... "They're very valuable, they've got spells worked on them for the killing of demons. My father's sword has been the mark of nobility in our family for hundreds of years. I _won't_ leave without them." He folded his arms across his chest and tried to look stern.

Another brief conversation ensued, this one punctuated by annoyed tones and head-shaking. With a roll of his eyes, the smaller wizard vanished back into the cave, but the first one stayed, still blocking Kurogane's way. "Wait, please," he said, the polite tone taking on an edge.

The minutes seemed to crawl past; Kurogane's restlessness grew. He itched with the desire to go back to Fai's side, make sure no one was hurting him as they prepared to move him. Come to that, if the corridor was as dangerous as all that, why hadn't they just brought him outside already? None of his injuries extended to his neck or spine, there should be no reason why they couldn't rig a litter and bring him out. What was the damn holdup?

Someone called out, and Kurogane's guardian-captor turned his head and called something in response. He frowned, and tightened his grip on the staff before he turned back towards the cave-in. "Stay _here,_ please. Or go outside," he added, before he went.

Hell if he was going to follow orders like those. Kurogane began to follow him back -- and nearly ran into the second wizard, the irritable one, emerging from the stone chamber carrying Kurogane's swords bundled under his arm.

"These swords?" he demanded impatiently. Kurogane stared, dumbfounded; he'd never expected to see his weapons again. Souhi was missing her scabbard, and they were both coated with dust, but still...

Before Kurogane could try to take them back, the King emerged from the cave-in, a faint smear of dirt on one cheek but otherwise completely calm. "Ah," he said, sounding unsurprised to see Kurogane there. "Tools of the trade, for a demon-hunter, are they not? I'm sure you will understand if we keep possession of those, for now." He gave a sign and a brief order to one of the guards, who came forward and took the swords; then swept off towards the gallery entrance without looking back.

"Wait a minute! What's going on? Where's the wizard?" Kurogane demanded, but he was ignored. He looked at the guard holding his swords; the man looked back at him uncertainly, but if he understood Kurogane's language at all he gave no sign of it, and Kurogane was not about to start a brawl over his swords.

Two of the wizards, the polite one and the rude one, had taken up station on either side of the gap that lead to the cave-in. They raised their staffs over their head, crossing them to form a sort of arch, almost like an honor guard. There was nothing that Kurogane could see or hear, but he felt a low hum that raised the hair on the back of his neck.

Finally, _finally_ two of the dark-clad guards emerged from the space, carrying a pole litter between them; Fai's hair color was unmistakable drifting over the edge, dulled with stone dust as it was. Another of the white-clad wizards was accompanying the litter, one hand on Fai's chest and his lips moving on some inaudible words. He looked intent; Kurogane didn't think it would be a good idea to interrupt him. They walked by him as though he weren't even there; he barely got a glimpse of Fai's face as they went past, still deathly pale and with dark rings under his eyes, but much more relaxed, as though a terrible burden had been eased.

For a moment, Kurogane hesitated, torn between following the litter and staying with the man who had his swords. He glanced back at the cave-in which had been their prison, could have become his tomb, and so he saw the two wizards standing on either side of the arch lower their staffs.

Immediately, the echoing rush of stone began to fill the hallway, building to a loud crackling rumble as the tunnel beyond them collapsed. Kurogane was filled with horrified visions of what would have happened if the tunnel had collapsed on Fai, burying him under tons of rock at the last moment. Without conscious intent, he leapt forward and grabbed one of the mages by the fringes of his jacket.

"What the hell are you doing, you bloody idiot?" he roared. "If that had come down five minutes earlier, my friend would have been crushed!"

The pale man shoved him away with more force than he'd expected, glaring at him as he gathered the lapels of his coat back around him. "Keep your hands off me, barbarian!" he shot back. "We know what we're doing!"

The second wizard had moved to intervene, placing himself physically between Kurogane and the other wizard. "The tunnel would have collapsed no matter when we'd moved him," he said in a calming voice. "In a shell-based incantation like that one, when you move the central focus of the spell outside the delimiters of the area effected --"

He was using Japanese words, or at least Kurogane thought he was, but otherwise he made as little sense as if he'd lapsed back into his own language. He tried to get hold of his composure. " _What_... are you talking about?" he managed. "Why would it have come down when you moved him?"

The two wizards exchanged a long glance, and one of them said something in his own language. Kurogane waited with rapidly fraying temper, nerves still jangling from the close call of a few minutes before.

Finally the wizard turned back to him. "He was holding it up," he said. "Didn't you realize?"

They turned and walked away, leaving Kurogane in stunned silence.

"That _bastard,"_ was the first thing to escape him when his mind cleared. His mind flashed back to the strange frozen immobility of even the smallest rocks, the tingling numbness he'd felt when he touched them, which he'd mistaken for cold. All the time Kurogane had been making a fool of himself trying to find the way out, and Fai had never said a word. He'd out and out asked Fai if there was anything his magic could do, and Fai had lied and said no.

Fai had been half _killing_ himself trying to keep them both alive, and he'd never said a word, and Kurogane hadn't even guessed.

Back stiff, he turned and walked out of the stone tunnel that had nearly been his tomb.

It took a moment for him to adjust to the open air again, after so long underground. He'd misread the light; it was far enough past noon that the sight of the sun was cut off by the peaks above, and the light bounced down from white-crested slopes to fill the pass with a cool silver radiance. The wind was icy cold, tugging at his arms and legs as it blew through the pass, but as cold as it was at least it didn't have the clammy chill of the underground stone, so Kurogane set himself to endure.

The rocky defile was full of people and horses, most of them wearing the dark bulky furs and carrying the halberds of Ceres soldiers. Half a dozen blue-and-white robed figures flitted among them, talking to each other or going about some mysterious task. In the gloom of the tunnel he'd mostly identified them by their glittering robes, but out in the light he could see them better. Their hair coloration, far from all being the same, ran a dizzying gamut from almost-black through bewildering orange to a medium yellow. But they all shared an alienness of feature that made it hard for Kurogane to tell them apart at first. He'd expected them all to look similar to Fai, but it was hard to see the resemblance.

He looked around, trying to pick out the important targets in this bustle. The king was easy to spot, surrounded by a swarm of guards and wizards further up the slope to his right; Fai's litter was not far away, with several intent figures bent over it. He didn't immediately see the soldier who had taken his swords, and when he turned in the other direction to search for him, he gasped in shock.

Not a hundred yards away from him down the path, the ground vanished. Kurogane advanced cautiously towards the precipice, stopping well before the rock edge; a couple of Ceres men who were working on something incomprehensible near the edge glanced over him and called out in a warning tone which Kurogane was only too happy to heed. The destruction that the avalanche had wrought on the mountain pass was easy enough to see, but hard to comprehend.

The valley for half a mile beyond the pass was clotted with shattered ice and broken stone, and Kurogane wondered how many of his own countrymen were buried beneath that cold and final grave; the thought made him sick. The rockfall finally petered out into a spray of gravel and frost nearly a mile on, and past that boundary he could see that the army of Nihon had retreated down the valley, all their previous violent energy now stilled to a shocked numbness.

 _What are you going to do now, Kendappa?_ Kurogane wondered. Beyond the broken edge of the path, the mountainside dropped in a sheer cliff for well over a hundred yards, before giving way to a slope too steep and treacherous for any human or animal to scale. The implacable face of stone made a barrier between Ceres and Nihon as effective as any warded stone wall; no one was going to be getting up or down through this pass ever again, unless they could fly.

He glanced over at the wizards by the side of the pass, working intently on setting up some kind of runed circle, and amended that uneasy thought. No one _except_ those who could fly.

It seemed that Ceres and Nihon were at an impasse, at least for now. There was no way for Kendappa to continue her advance up the valley -- but neither, having suffered such ferocious losses, could she possibly give up and go home. The upper reaches of Ceres were safe for now, but they'd lost a devastating amount of territory and had no army left to speak of.

All they had left were the wizards, and Kurogane realized that he had no idea what the next move in this game would be. Whatever it was, he was certain that King Ashura would not miss a single opportunity to turn the game in his favor.

  
**

  
They gave him a horse before the train set off through the pass; Kurogane had never been particularly sentimental about horses, seeing them primarily as transportation, but he found himself missing his familiar black gelding as he tried to adjust himself to the unfamiliar gait. Somewhat to his surprise, after less than an hour of riding, the king dropped back from the head of the column to ride beside Kurogane for a space. Kurogane watched him warily; the wizards and the king's bodyguards watched Kurogane suspiciously; and the King appeared carelessly amused by it all.

"So, Lord Suwa," Ashura said conversationally, easily checking his stallion's attempt to bite Kurogane's horse's ear off. "You seem to be quite concerned about Fai."

"He's an idiot," Kurogane said, uncomfortably aware that this was not an adequate response, but unable to articulate through his confusion and caution just what the truth was. "But I guess so."

"Ah." Ashura appeared to be regarding the mountains with some interest. "Are you in fact aware that his original mission was to find you and kill you?"

Kurogane growled under his breath. "Yes, in fact. I am."

"Did he tell you so?" Ashura said, in a voice of studied casualness.

"No," Kurogane said, refusing to get Fai into any more trouble than he already was. "I found out when he tried to kill me."

Ashura's eyebrows went up. "He _tried_ to kill you?"

"Yes," Kurogane said. "I fought him off," he added, a trifle defiantly.

Ashura smiled, and Kurogane had no trouble reading the faint mockery behind it. "He can't have been trying very hard," he said.

Kurogane bristled at that comment, but given that his own suspicions had run along uncomfortably similar lines, couldn't really deny it.

"Why, then," Ashura continued, "would you choose to accompany him back to Ceres, knowing of his mission? Out of... concern?"

This conversation was drifting onto dangerous ground. Every possible response had its own hazards; Kurogane decided to hell with it, and took it in the direction he wanted to go anyway. "I made him take me back to Ceres so that I could confront you directly," he said bluntly. "Not through any proxy or on anyone's orders. I thought that if you wanted me dead so badly, then you should fight me man-to-man."

Ashura looked taken aback, which gratified Kurogane. The king repeated, in a puzzled tone, "You came over miles of wilderness in winter, across a hostile border swarming with troops and through an unstable tunnel that almost buried you alive, because you wanted to give me a chance to kill you in person?"

Put that way, it did sound a little ridiculous -- except for one additional element. "Well," he said, "I was also thinking of _me_ a chance to kill _you_ in person."

This provoked an angry buzz from the king's bodyguards, several of whom clutched at their weapons and spurred their horses closer, but Kurogane kept his eyes on Ashura. The king smiled, and there was a feral gleam in his eyes behind the cultured facade.

"I see," was his only reply. He raised one hand absently, and the bodyguards reluctantly fell back. "You know, Lord Suwa, there are very few people who would care to threaten a king to his face."

"You're King of the country who's making war on my people," Kurogane pointed out. "If I can't, who can?"

Ashura actually laughed. "Well said," he replied. "Well then, Kurogane, this is a topic we must discuss at length later. I regretfully must decline your offer at this time, however, until we have reached the castle and shelter, where we can attempt to kill each other in safety."

"Your Majesty!" one of the bodyguards objected faintly, but it sounded like his heart wasn't really in it.

"Fine," Kurogane said, thinking of the ominous clouds, and he found his eyes drawn unconsciously to the litter which was riding near the head of the column, obscuring its passenger from view.

Ashura followed his gaze, and Kurogane kicked himself for drawing the king's attention back to Fai, when he'd finally managed to distract the bastard.

"I must say," Ashura said, in that almost-casual tone that immediately put Kurogane back on his guard. "Traveling with you seems to have been good for Fai. You've taken fairly good care of him, all things considered."

Kurogane eyed Ashura warily, but for a change Ashura almost seemed sincere. "He was injured on my watch," he said tentatively. "I'm no doctor, but I did what I could."

"That was well enough, if crude," Ashura said, waving it away. "But not what I was referring to. Apart from the injury, his overall condition looked quite good. Most notably, he seemed to have put on a bit of weight."

That got Kurogane's attention. "Yes, well, there was nowhere to go but up on that one," he growled. "When I first met him, he could have blown over in a high wind. Don't you feed your wizards in Ceres?"

"When we can," Ashura said with an edged smile. "But Fai is a difficult case. It's not a question of us refusing to feed him, but of him refusing to eat."

"I know that," Kurogane said. "He just needs someone to sit on him and order him to do it, and he'll do it."

Ashura's smile widened. "Ah, but it's not quite that simple. You see, it's not just enough to tell him to eat; even then he'll find a way to refuse more often than not. He won't eat unless forced to -- by someone he deeply trusts and admires."

That gave Kurogane something to chew over, even when Ashura pushed his horse back to the top of the column.

Not that there wasn't plenty else on the ride to worry about. The king had said something about a storm, but since the sky was still clear when they'd begun the ride, Kurogane had discounted the comment. Now, however, he was beginning to pick up on the uneasiness of the men and animals; the way the horses stamped and shied away from sudden gusts of wind, the increasing frequency with which the men looked up at the still-clear sky.

But the wind was dropping in temperature and increasing in force, rising in volume to a vibrating whistle as it forced its way through the narrow stone passages that they followed. Up this far in the ranges, with stone walls on every side, the view of the sky was limited to a few slices almost directly overhead. It occurred to Kurogane that by the time you could see the clouds up here, it would be too late to find shelter.

The thought made him feel hemmed-in and oppressed almost as badly as he had been underground; that and the close quarters of the stone walls squeezing in on either side. It would be a terrible, cramped place for a fight, should they come across any demons -- or human enemies.

As they passed out of the narrow gap between two mountains, the stone walls fell away on either side and Kurogane began to relax, take in the land around them. While the pass had mostly been a stony gulch with no more than grey-green grass or turf clinging determinedly to the rocks, now he began to see plants and trees again; conifers and scrub brush, still holding onto their green needles even this late in the season. It was surprising somehow to see green even amidst so much cold gray stone.

The path also grew broader, became a proper road lined with stone and with markers every few miles, but it continued to wind upwards and around the peaks like a thread through a labyrinth. Though the elevation was always rising, sometimes the road would crest a ridge and drop suddenly into a shallow dell filled with houses and fields, crowding over the shallower slopes and around frozen streams and lakes.

Kurogane looked with great interest at these little hamlets as they passed; this was the first chance he'd gotten to see the fields and stone houses of Ceres as living towns, not smoking ruins. The houses seemed even stranger to his eyes complete and whole; they were made of  
cut stone, not wood and thatch like most peasant houses in Nihon, each one like a miniature castle. But then, if there was one thing they had in abundance up here it was stone, so perhaps the towns were not as rich as they first appeared.

The clusters of houses seemed rustic and tiny to Kurogane's eyes; he was used to the sprawling boundaries of the Nihon empire, which would go for miles and miles as long as there were fields to be sown and roads to follow. His first impression was that without the lost lower  
valley, all of Ceres could have fit within the bounds of the castle city in Edo. But as the journey continued and more and more of the little valleys appeared and disappeared into the stone, he began to realize that although the communities were small, there were a lot more of them than he suspected.

Instead of one large city, it was like a city had been broken into a hundred pieces and scattered among the interstices of the mountain folds. Roads branching off the main roads wound away in other directions, suggesting more towns nestled in the arms of the mountain peaks; he caught a glimpse of some of them in the distance, and wondered how many of them there could be. More, he wondered how they could possibly stay in communication with each other, isolated as they would be during the winter.

Winter. Kurogane glanced uneasily upwards; in the more open territory now he could even see the grey overcast beginning to build in the sky. The sunlight had never been strong, but now it was fading fast, and flurries of ice almost too small to see were carried along in the whipping wind.

"Hey," he called out to one of the wizards, who was riding within earshot and also frowning up at the sky. The man glanced over at him, obviously startled to be addressed. "Shouldn't we take shelter? In one of these towns, I mean."

The man shook his head, then pulled his hood more tightly around his face. "No room for us," he said. "All these lower towns have too many people already, refugees from the valley. They would not be able to feed us through the storm."

"How long do storms usually last up here?" Kurogane asked, alarmed by the implications. From what Fai had said food was seriously short in the winter, but things were even worse than he'd implied if a town couldn't afford to feed their king and his court even for a few days.

"Different times, but this time of the season, a storm this strong..." The wizard tilted his head upwards to look back at the sky, lips moving silently for a moment. "Two, three weeks? A... fortnight, I think that is how you would say it in your language."

"What?!" Kurogane stared up at the sky with a new dismay, stared around at the inhospitable rock. "You're kidding me!"

"Kidding? No, no," the man said in surprise. Then a small, cruel smile touched his face. "I hope that all Nihon soldiers know as little as you. Winter in the mountains is not kind. If they try to stay by the pass the whole time, they will be buried by the snow and frozen by the cold and blown away by the wind." He sounded almost gleeful at the idea.

Uncomfortable, Kurogane looked away, reminded pointedly once more of his position among enemies. "I just hope that we aren't," was all he felt safe saying.

The wizard laughed, the malice fading somewhat from his voice. "Don't be afraid. We will reach the palace soon. You can see it already over this direction." He pointed northwards, slightly to the left of the gap their road seemed to be making for, and Kurogane followed his arm.

For a moment he wasn't sure what he was looking at; the glowing white spire appeared to be just another of the ice-capped mountain peaks, if narrow and more symmetrical. But a shift of the angle or the light as they rode suddenly brought it into perspective, and his eyes widened  
as he took in the sight of a castle, formed all of white stone, apparently just floating there among the clouds.

It was nothing like Shirasagi castle; the lines were all wrong, with columns and spires clawing vertically into the air rather than overlapping horizontal tiers; the highest pinnacles seemed to be challenging the sky itself. He couldn't identify what kind of stone had been used to build it, but it seemed to catch the dimming winter light and glow with it, carefully worked stone tracing like frost across the walls and angles.

Fai had spoken offhandedly about a castle in the sky; now, seeing Ruval palace for the first time, Kurogane thought he understood what that meant.

The persistent illusion did not fade as they closed the last final hours of the journey. Especially not when Kurogane, capping a turn on one of the switchback trails, made the mistake of turning and looking down the mountainside and valleys which they'd climbed. None of the slopes the road had covered had been too steep at one time, but it all added up to a dizzying distance from the safe level ground he was used to. Looking out over all that empty air left him feeling entranced and horrified at the same time. He'd never felt this pitching vertigo looking out from the branches of a tree, or standing on the battlements of Shirasagi castle; then again, it had never been so far to fall before.

He hoped he wasn't going to be one of those men who were allergic to heights, the way Fai had been allergic to closed spaces; although if Fai had been raised up here, with such expanses of open air around him, that aversion to tight quarters seemed to make a kind of sense. He wondered if it was a common affliction among the people of Ceres, or if Fai was just unlucky.

The first sight of the castle over the ridge turned out to be the best look he had of the place. As they drew closer, the light dimmed even further, the clouds closed in, and snow began to fall in earnest. The wind which had been whistling about their ears the whole climb up the mountain rose to a howling pitch, and Kurogane had no more time to look about him at the countryside, concentrating instead on staying on his horse and not freezing to death.

He was still dressed for autumn in the lowlands, after all, and even the warm padding under his armor was little barrier against the chewing cold that came with this storm. When one of the soldiers rode him to him and thrust a heavy, bearskin cloak into his arms without a word, he took it and was grateful for the warmth it provided.

By the time they reached the palace at last, passing out of the gale into the surprisingly warm and brilliantly lit halls of marble, it no longer mattered to Kurogane that he was a prisoner in the heart of enemy territory. All that mattered was that it was shelter.

A small army of servants was waiting for them when the heavy palace doors finally closed behind them with a crash; they descended on the King and his train, filling the air with questions and anxious comments. Ashura cut through them all with calm, precise authority, and sent people running in various ways to carry out his orders. Meanwhile, more strangers, wearing neither the white robes of the wizards nor the dark brown of guards, appeared and attached themselves to Ashura's elbow; judging by the richness of their clothes and the sad lack of fitness among them, Kurogane guessed they were ministers or courtiers, and dismissed them as none of his concern. He was more interested in locating Fai among all the hubbub, or at the very least track down what had happened to his swords; but neither of them were visible in the crowd, and he was at a loss which way to go in this new, strange building.

One man moving amid all the turmoil caught his attention, however, an attractive young man who looked only a few years older than Kurogane himself. All the northerners seemed pale to his eyes, Fai more than most of them; but this man's skin was as white as the robes he wore, completely colorless except for the faint shadow of veins and arteries peeking through at the wrists and neck. His hair was likewise an ashy grey like an old man's, free of pigment; the only color about the man was his eyes, a startlingly intense amber. His color was strikingly unnatural, even more so than the rest of these foreigners, and Kurogane couldn't stop staring.

The man must have felt his stare, because he turned those sharp eyes on Kurogane and began to make his way through the crowd towards him. He was wearing large, round spectacles not unlike those of Kyle Rondart, the court scribe, and Kurogane realized that the glass was faintly tinted. To protect his eyes? He wondered if this man even could go out in the sun, or if he would burn worse than Fai ever did.

"You must be Kurogane?" the man said, breaking into his tired, half-hypnotized ruminations. "I watched you come in."

Startled, Kurogane jerked a nod of confirmation. "How did you know my name?" he blurted out.

The stranger smiled; his soft voice and expression were refreshingly free of the background hostility that pervaded all the others, and Kurogane found himself warming to this young man almost despite himself. Friends, or at least allies, were going to be in short supply in the coming weeks; he should do all he could to cultivate them. "I heard about you from Fai, when he gave his report after the last mission," he said. "You are exactly as he described you. You could be no one else."

"He reported to you?" Kurogane studied his robe, mostly white with only blue stripes and a great deal of silver gilt around the cuffs and shoulders; he couldn't read the meaning, but it suggested a certain amount of seniority. He had to get in the habit of not judging wizards by their apparent youth; probably none of them looked their natural age. A name surfaced in Kurogane's memories and clicked into place with a sudden certainty. "You're Yukito, aren't you?"

The man blinked, and then smiled wider and nodded. "Yes. Yukito Tsukishiro. I serve King Ashura as second senior wizard to his court."

"Right," Kurogane said. "Fai's boss. He told me about you."

Yukito started, losing his smile, and looked at him sharply. Blue light slid across the glass of his spectacles as he moved, not at all the color of the light from the lamps, and Kurogane thought with a sudden bone-deep certainty that those glasses must be enchanted too. "He said that to you?" Yukito asked cautiously.

"When I asked him, yeah," Kurogane said. "You are, aren't you?"

"Well," Yukito said cautiously, "we don't usually think of ourselves in such hierarchical terms --"

"He said that, too," Kurogane said.

" -- but actually, you could say that Fai is _my_ boss."

Kurogane's jaw dropped. " _What?"_ he managed after several seconds. "But he can't -- that would make him --"

"High Senior Wizard," Yukito confirmed with a nod, and then hastened to add; "Oh, he's not the _eldest_ of us -- Guru Clef is older, and certainly very well respected, but he's not nearly as powerful as Fai, and he doesn't really have the, well, _flexibility_ of mind to serve as Ashura's primary lieutenant."

Kurogane shook his head, feeling as though parts of his brain had been frozen. "You're trying to tell me that _that_ idiot is King Ashura's right-hand man?"

"Well, yes," Yukito fidgeted with the slender staff he carried, tracing his fingers over the intricate carvings in the wood, and studied Kurogane's expression a little nervously. "He'd almost have to be, as the King's heir -- not by blood, of course, but for all intents and purposes he is King Ashura's adopted son, and when his engagement to Princess Sakura is consummated, that will only complete the formalities."

The frozen feeling spread out over his face, down the rest of his body. Kurogane wondered idly what his expression must look like; judging from the reflection in Yukito's eyes, nothing good.

"He never told me that," Kurogane said, his voice sounding like it was coming from somewhere very far away. He supposed he should feel upset, but right now all he could feel was numb.

Yukito looked at him, his amber eyes solemn behind the panes of round glass. "No, I can't say I'm surprised he didn't," he said, with something almost approaching compassion in his voice. "He was going out into wild territory, after all, with dangerous, untrustworthy people -- it pays to be a little cautious."

Kurogane wanted to be outraged by the implied insult, but he couldn't seem to muster up the nerve, and so he said nothing.

"You must be tired from your journey, Lord Suwa," Yukito said quietly. "You should go to your quarters now. These guards will escort you there."

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fai's last name, Flowright, is actually Ashura's clan name. Way back when in Ceres before the centrally dominant monarchy really got started, powerful clans tended to take their names from the mines that their territory controlled. The clan that Ashura's family came from took the name from the distinguishing mineral in their region, fluorite, which became the clan name Flowright.
> 
> When Ashura's clan became kings, they gained the right to use the country name, Ceresu, which takes precedence over their local clan name, (and so Ashura is Ashura Ceresu rather than Ashura Flowright, although technically he is both.) As Ashura's foster son and heir, Fai actually has the right to use the royal name Ceresu as well, but he does not claim it, instead choosing to adopt the widely disused name of Ashura's personal family line to indicate a more humble and personal connection.


	12. Old Wounds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kurogane meets the princess of Ceres, and learns the terrible truth about Fai's past.

Someone was calling him from close by; someone whose commands he could not ignore. "Fai," Ashura's voice came to him, gentle but inexorable. "Wake up now, Fai."

Struggling to obey, he opened his eyes and blinked against the warm brightness. Yellow lamplight against white walls; warm blankets and sheets around him. He was home, and therefore safe; he could feel a deep, aching exhaustion trying to pull him back into unconsciousness, but the crushing weight that he had spent so long fighting against was gone. He was safe.

He was safe, but what about -- memory returned to him all at once, he looked frantically around the room, searching for Kurogane. He hadn't counted on being incapacitated or unconscious for his homecoming, and thus unable to mediate between Kurogane and Ashura. For a moment he feared the worst, and could barely stutter out "Where is K -- where is my -- my friend? Is he -- did you -- ?"

"He is elsewhere in the palace, and unharmed," Ashura assured him, and Fai nearly melted with relief into the mattress until Ashura continued; "For now. At least until we can determine what his status shall be."

He still had a chance, then. Fai took a deep breath, and tried to muster his most eloquent arguments. "Your Majesty, please spare him," he said, fighting to keep his voice steady. "For all that he is a soldier of Nihon, he has never done us any harm, never meant us any harm. He is not our enemy, and he is powerful, he could be a powerful ally if we could ever convince him to our cause. At the very least, we should try, couldn't we try? To kill him would be wasteful, and a terrible injustice -- I could never... he has never... he has never harmed us, it isn't right..."

When Fai ran down, catching his breath, Ashura raised a hand for silence. "Very well," he said. "Since the prospect of this man's death has driven you to such distraction, then I will grant you the favor you ask for. I hereby rescind my command for the demon-hunter's death. On the condition that he agrees to cooperate and do no harm to Ceres, he will remain in Ruval under my personal protection. None in this country shall harm him."

Fai shut his eyes, relief coursing through him, and let out a breath that felt like he'd been holding it in for weeks. His shoulders slumped as though a thousand-pound weight had been removed, and he murmured, "Thank you. Thank you, my lord..."

But Ashura wasn't finished. "It deeply disappoints me, Fai, that things should come to this," he said, and Fai shuddered from his disapproval. "Much as I love you, the needs of our country are great, and you, it seems, are weaker and more fickle than I had thought. I am forced to wonder if you can truly be trusted to stand at my side, direct my troops and carry out my commands, in the days ahead. Are you still trustworthy, Fai?"

Fai's eyes flared open again, agony twisting inside his chest. "Your Majesty, please. I have never disobeyed you before, I swear that I never will again! Give me a chance to prove myself to you. Please..."

Ashura looked down on Fai, his expression serene and thoughtful. "Perhaps," he said. "Yes, I will give you another chance. If you serve me well in the days ahead, then my trust in you will be restored."

"However," he added after a moment, his voice going stern once more, "I do not want you to encounter or speak with that man again. I think I will leave the _geas_ intact, at least until such time as your powers are needed again. You can do without them in the meantime, and perhaps the marking will serve as... a reminder."

Fai flinched again, and bowed his head, not meeting Ashura's eyes. It was a humiliating reminder of his disappointment to Ashura to be so hobbled, limited to only the simplest of spells. But it was no more than he deserved, for his disobedience, and he knew it. "Yes, my lord," he whispered.

"Rest now, Fai. You must regain your strength, if you are to do your duties by me," Ashura told him, with a gentleness in his voice that spoke of a love that Fai had never earned, could never be worthy of, and that heartache followed him back down into the darkness.

  
***

  
They gave Kurogane his own chamber in the palace, small and plain but adequately furnished with comforts; it was certainly no prison cell. They took away his armor but gave him clothes, fur-lined and belted in the style of Ceres. He was grateful for the warmth, but he was sure he looked ridiculous in them, especially since they were a size or two too small and several inches of wrist and ankle stuck out from the ends of the sleeves.

A servant brought meals to his chamber twice a day, and spoke at least enough basic _nihongo_ that after three days of this Kurogane was able to track Ashura down in the library and confront him.

The king was seated at a stone-topped table, a book open before him and a quill and parchment ready at his right hand. He raised his head when Kurogane burst in, trailed by his keeper-guard; and if he didn't look particularly pleased by Kurogane's presence, he didn't look surprised, either.

"Why are you doing all this?" Kurogane said without preamble. "Why go to all this trouble? You wanted me dead; why not just kill me now?"

The king smiled slightly. "Why, because you care so much for Fai, of course. How could I deny charity to someone who shares an object of affection with me?"

"Bullshit," Kurogane said strongly. "What's the real reason?"

The king's smile grew slightly edged, but seemed much more real. "The true reason? Because Fai cares about you."

Kurogane stopped and thought about it. That sounded almost sincere, but it still didn't add up. "His caring about me didn't stop you from sending him out to kill me before," he growled.

"Yes, indeed," Ashura said, rubbed his eyes with one hand and sighed. "An error in judgment on my part, which caused him much unnecessary distress, and a terrible strain on his loyalty which nearly lost me one of my strongest weapons."

"Is that how you see Fai? As some tool to use and throw away?" Kurogane challenged.

Ashura shrugged, and spread his hands in a what-would-you-have-of-me gesture. "Son of my heart, heir to my throne, minister of my court, betrothed to my daughter, lieutenant in my wars, weapon in my arsenal... he's all these things to me, in turns. And yes, my most powerful tool, as well, my best weapon."

"So what do you need me for, if you know he's so loyal to you?" Kurogane demanded with exasperation. "If we're all the best of friends here, why don't you just let me leave?"

Ashura smiled again, and icy light seemed to flicker in his eyes. "Now, I couldn't allow one of my guests to venture out into such a dangerous climate," he said. "You could be hurt."

"I didn't plan to try to winter in Ceres," Kurogane said. "I meant go home to Nihon."

"Yes," Ashura said calmly. "Which is going to be a terribly unsafe place before long."

Kurogane stared, the hair beginning to stand up on the back of his neck; but Ashura continued imperturbably, "It's best for everyone if you stay our honored guest here," he said. "That way, Fai won't be troubled by the thoughts of you in some peril or danger out there, and he will no longer be inspired to any kind of... disloyal acts, knowing that you are safe and secure in my hands."

Something seemed to click over at last in Kurogane's head. "And he also knows that if he _does_ step a foot out of line, you've got me to hold against him," he snarled. "You _bastard."_

"My dear Lord of Suwa. How did you get to be so cynical at such a young age?" Ashura said in a tone of mild surprise. "I'm only looking out for everyone's well-being; yours, mine, and Fai's as well."

"Why won't you let me see him?" Kurogane said finally. Straightforward and honest questions seemed to be the best way to get results from Ashura; which was just as well, as Kurogane was not good at roundabout word games or deceptions.

Ashura looked at him, his regard steady. "Because I was not sure I trusted you around him," he said equally candidly, "or him around you."

Of course, that didn't mean that he'd get results that he'd _like_. He ground his teeth in frustration, but Ashura had sensed blood and was moving in for the kill. "Why do you want to see him so badly?" he countered. "Your stated reason for coming to Ceres was to face _me_."

Kurogane sighed, and rubbed his hands over his eyes. He didn't like talking about this so openly, but Ashura was far too perceptive; it wasn't like hiding his motives was doing either of them a damn bit of good. "I'm worried about him," he said quietly. "He was hurt. I want to make sure he's doing well."

Ashura gave him a cool look. "I assure you, Lord Suwa, that our doctors are more than competent. Certainly, they are more competent to look after his injuries than you."

"It's not his injuries that I'm worried about," Kurogane said. "At least, not his physical ones."

For the first time, Ashura hesitated. "What do you mean?" he said finally, and his voice betrayed a hint of uncertainty.

It almost made Kurogane feel like they were allies, in this strange battlefield; they might be from enemy nations, but in this they could find common ground. "I traveled with the mage for almost a month," he said finally, "and I know he's no coward. He faced down deadly danger any number of times, fought against a force of brigands that outnumbered us ten to one -- watched my back against a demon, and I know exactly what kind of courage that takes. But when we were in the tunnel, he was scared out of his mind, scared in a way no rational person should possibly be. And when we were trapped under the stone..."

He trailed off, trying to find a way to express his worries, to make his own fears seem rational. "He wasn't all _there_ all the time, it was like he forgot where he was, who I was. It was like he forgot who _he_ was, and he talked to himself... a lot. I know he was hit on the head, and I know that can do strange things to a man's mind, break things in funny little ways that can never be repaired." Ashura was listening in a way that made Kurogane sure for the first time that he had all the man's attention; he covered his mouth with his hand and stared at Kurogane intently with sharp gray eyes. "That's what I'm afraid of, that he's lost inside his mind, and can't find his way back."

Ashura leaned across the table towards him, his grey eyes intent, a concerned crease between his brows. "You said he talked to himself," he said. "What do you mean by that?"

Kurogane was confused by the question; didn't he mean exactly what he said? Maybe Ashura just didn't know that phrase. "I mean... he talked to himself as though he thought he were a completely separate person," he tried. "He'd answer my questions, but as though he were hearing a completely different conversation."

"What _exactly_ did he say?" Ashura asked sharply.

"He'd say things like 'Don't be afraid, Fai,' or 'You aren't alone, Fai, I'm with you.' " It made him uncomfortable to repeat the mage's delirious rambling, like he was giving away his secrets; but it seemed to mean something to Ashura.

Ashura sighed, a deep and rich sound, and buried his face in his two hands. It made him look suddenly ten years older, with those penetrating eyes hooded, and much more human. "Oh, my poor boy," he said, voice muffled. After a moment, he raised his head again and regarded Kurogane, rather sadly. "You have nothing to fear, Lord Kurogane," he said. "He has not lost touch with reality. Quite the reverse, in fact... At any rate, he is no less sane than he has ever been."

Kurogane tensed. He didn't like the sound of that. "I don't understand," he said.

Ashura waved his hand in impatient dismissal. "You don't need to understand," he said. "He'll be all right."

Kurogane's hand tightened on the edge of the desk, hard enough that the metal edge creaked. "I _need to understand_ ," he said, voice vibrating with intensity.

Ashura looked at him for a long moment, gaze flickering to the abused edge of the desk in his hands, but finally nodded. "Yes. I think perhaps I'd better explain to you. You have the need, and I believe you have earned the right." The king gestured to one of the delicate chairs that graced the library -- metal-framed, as everything in this kingdom seemed to be. Kurogane eyed it warily, but it took his weight well enough.

Ashura began. "Although I consider him my own, Fai is not originally from Ceres. He is of Valeria."

"Valeria?" Kurogane's head came up, startled. He didn't pay much attention to politics, but he was familiar with _that_ name. "You mean he was _from_ Valeria? Wait -- isn't that the country that you guys went out and conquered, what, thirty-five years ago? And to think that you complain that _we're_ conquistadors," he added somewhat bitterly.

Ashura smiled dryly. "Perhaps. But there are some differences. It began when we received a most unusual letter, delivered by a messenger half-dead from exhaustion and injuries, signed by most of the high-ranking noble families of Valeria. The letter was addressed to all the heads of sovereign nations surrounding Valeria, begging for intervention and aid, in any form. We did not invade Valeria. We were invited."

Kurogane snorted. Like he hadn't heard that story before. The histories of Nihon were filled with similar declarations, about how this or that outlying province was undyingly grateful to have been brought under the enlightened rule of the Empire and share in its prosperity.

Ashura shrugged. "I can show you the original letter, still sealed in our archives. Although I suppose you have no reason not to think it a forgery. But it's true. You see, the king of Valeria was mad.

"There is intrigue and conflict in every kingdom, I suppose, between the central appointed authority of the crown and that of the nobles who manage the land. But the then king of Valeria, through whatever disease or curse or heredity, was truly insane. He had progressed from ordering mass arrest and imprisonment of those he thought were plotting against him -- or had insulted him -- or failed to show sufficient proof of loyalty -- to simply sending out his troops to murder them on the spot. Men, women, children and all. Entire villages were disappearing off the map of Valeria overnight. The high court was desperate, terrorized, when they were driven to sign and send out that missive. I am surprised a copy of it never made it to Nihon; perhaps the messenger was caught and killed along the way. History might have turned out quite differently if they had reached you first.

"It is the wrong word perhaps to say that we _conquered_ Valeria. When I went there -- led my army there -- " Ashura's eyes had gone very distant, and Kurogane was led to wonder anew at his age. He didn't look much older than thirty, no lines on his face or grey in his hair, but those eyes were far older than that. It bothered Kurogane that he couldn't remember, off-hand, how many years the present King of Ceres had ruled.

"Except for some last-ditch defenses from the border guards, who were confused and frightened but, I supposed, carrying out their duty in the only way they knew how... we met no resistance on our ride to the court. There was no one left who could resist us, or would. Those who survived were hiding in their homes, or some even in the wilderness, in the rocks and rime. Some threw rocks, or screamed insults; some came out to throw themselves at our feet and beg for mercy. But none of them fought us, no.

"When we reached the court..." The years-distant look in Ashura's expression intensified. It was as though he wasn't seeing Kurogane, or this little chamber, at all. "The gates were locked, but there was no one to defend them. We broke down the gates and rode in, myself and my guard, ready for... anything, we thought, but we met no one. No one alive. We passed through the receiving chambers, through the banquet hall... the old king believed, you see, that if he ate the flesh of those he killed, then their powers would increase his, and make him ever more powerful."

Breakfast was becoming a regret in Kurogane's stomach. He swallowed hard, but didn't interrupt.

"The servants were slaughtered or fled, the nobles missing. Even the royal family had not been spared. The king's half-brother, his male cousins, would of course have been a threat to him; their bodies had been on display for some time before we arrived. We found the queen's body, in the end, broken on the courtyard stones. It was... not entirely clear from the evidence, whether she had jumped from the tower in her last despair, or if she had been pushed.

"It was underground that we at last found people in that castle alive. The jailers were still alive, though we didn't bother to keep them so. Some of the high court were still there, even, locked in cells awaiting their turn at the kitchens. Further down we found even some older prisoners, from much earlier in the king's reign, mercifully forgotten perhaps. And... we also found one cell, more of an oubliette than a proper prison, no light from the outside, no higher," -- he made a gesture with his hand, indicating height -- "than my waist. Even they could not stand up in such a cell."

"They?" Kurogane hazarded, when Ashura did not immediately continue his story.

"The king's young children, the missing heirs to the throne. The twin princes of Valeria, Fai and Yuui of Valeria."

" _What?_ " Kurogane came bolt upright with the exclamation. "Crown prince of -- wait a minute, twins? Fai has a _brother?_ "

Ashura shook his head, slowly. "We found the two of them, in that pit. One alive. One dead. It was hard to tell, from the condition of the cell, how long they had been there. Maybe months, maybe years. But Prince Fai had obviously died only recently -- more than one week, but less than two. Starved to death, by all indications."

Kurogane's head jerked up, gaze locking with Ashura's. "Prince _Fai?_ Don't you mean -- the other one -- Yuui? Because Fai isn't --" Gruesome visions of necromancy danced through his head, and he shook his head helplessly; he didn't understand this.

"No," Ashura said calmly. "I said what I meant. Little Fai was dead; his twin brother, Yuui, was still alive. We took him back to Ceres... I had decided, you see, to raise him as my own since he had no living family remaining. But it took him quite a long time to learn to do things again. To stand straight again, to walk, to meet people's eyes. To speak..."

Ashura trailed off, and for a moment he seemed years away, lost in memories of another time. He shook his head, and seemed to come back to himself. "When he did finally speak, he told us that Yuui of Valeria was dead, and from then on he would be Fai, Fai Flowright of Ceres."

"So when he was talking to 'Fai'... under the ruins, I mean..." Kurogane said slowly. "He wasn't talking to himself, exactly. He was talking to the first Fai, his brother..."

"Yes. Most likely the surroundings reminded him... rather sharply of his childhood, and put him in mind of his lost brother again."

Kurogane sat stunned, trying to reconcile this story with the Fai he knew -- careless and flighty, always finding something new to laugh at, always friendly. No wonder the mage had looked at him like he had two heads when he asked if Fai had loved his parents. Fai had never _had_ parents, just worthless wastes of flesh, royal or not -- and that was another thing he couldn't believe, a _prince --_

Ashura held up one hand, commanding Kurogane's attention again. "Do keep in mind, this is not something that Fai talks about. To anyone. I'm not entirely certain how much of it he remembers, or how clearly... and how much he has allowed himself to forget. I only told you so that you could understand about his brother, and to some extent why he is... the way he is."

Kurogane opened his mouth, then closed it again. He'd begun asking questions in this audience with the worry that Fai was insane, or had been driven so. The new information he'd learned, while in some ways appeasing that worry, only served to open up more questions. "So he really is -- was -- is the heir to the throne of Valeria," he said, tasting the amazement in his voice, and then shook his head. "Why do you keep him here, then? Why not set him up as king in Valeria, puppet-king if that's what you really wanted? Do you like the idea of keeping another country's royalty under your eye, in servitude to you?"

His voice was challenging, but the king did not rise to the bait. "For many reasons," he said, "some of them having to do with me, some having to do with Fai, and some having to do with Valeria itself. How much do you know about the country of Valeria, and its people?"

"Not much. They're a tiny country way up in the mountains. Backwards." Of course, they said the same things about Ceres, in Edo.

"Backwards is an apt description. The people of Valeria are very superstitious, the nobles no less so in the peasants. It is still said, among -- " Ashura hesitated, then went on, " -- certain segments of the population, that it was the birth of royal twins that cursed the king, sent him into madness in the first place. And as conditions grew worse in Valeria, the twins were blamed."

Kurogane stared in disbelief. "But they were just children!"

"In Valeria, twins are held to be a bad omen, and the higher their rank, the worse the luck they are supposed to bring. The traditional ritual for disposing of twins is -- well, that doesn't matter now." Ashura grimaced, like there was a bad taste in his mouth.

"Even among those who don't believe in the old legends, who don't believe in the curse of the twins... the old king was widely hated, as you can imagine. Any blood relatives of his would be... not welcomed back, not to Valeria, and especially not to the throne. He finds it easier to avoid his home country entirely, and be only Fai of Ceres."

Kurogane pushed himself off the chair, which scraped back with a teeth-grinding noise, and began to pace. He couldn't keep still, not with this feeling, slow black rage like molasses boiling up around the cracks in his self-control. More than anything, he wanted something he could hit, some target he could lash out at... "What about the king?" he asked abruptly. It was probably too much to hope that he'd still be alive for righteous vengeance thirty years after the fact, but he had to ask.

Ashura's eyebrow rose slightly, but he answered, "We found him in his throne room -- on his throne, in fact -- with a blade in his belly. He was still alive when we found him, but he didn't survive for long, and he said nothing of sense in the hours before he died. Quite, quite mad."

"Suicide?" Kurogane inquired hopefully. _Harikiri_ was considered a final way to atone for lost honor, in Nihon; and while he didn't think a simple belly-slitting would possibly make up for a life like his, it was a step in the right direction.

"Possibly. It was his blade, anyway."

Kurogane frowned, and kept pacing. Something still didn't add up quite right, here. Ashura watched him, bemused, but made no move to end the audience. Emboldened, Kurogane went on, "Here's what I don't understand. The old bastard was ax crazy, I get that. And he locked up or killed off most of his court, and terrorized and killed the peasantry. Fine. But if he killed everyone around him who could have supported him, then who was carrying out his orders? One man by himself, even a king, can't personally kill half a country. You said that when you invaded, you didn't even find an army left to fight. So who was doing it?"

Ashura sat back, folding his hands on the table, and looked at Kurogane with a new interest. "An incisive question. I can only tell you what I saw, and no, we encountered no army, not even a city guard. But when asked about it, the surviving court nobles -- and those of the peasants who overcame their terror enough to speak out -- talked about the king's devoted corps of men, who wore black and never showed their faces. They supposedly started showing up several years before, just as the king was going over the edge into madness, and as the army and regular guards became less and less, there were more and more of them."

"They had to have been local Valerians, though, right? Personally sworn to the king?" If there had been that many, then surely there were still some left, even after all this time.

Ashura shrugged, spreading his long, elegant hands. "No single person we talked to ever claimed to know who a single one of them was. Covered faces or no, there should have been at least some parent -- friend -- brother -- but no. They seemed to be complete outsiders. Even the crest they wore was not the King's personal seal."

"What was it, then?" Kurogane said.

"As I said, we never saw any of these special guards. Whether they existed at all or not, there was no sign of them when we entered the scene -- not alive, not a dead body, not even part of a garment. But the people who remembered seeing them talked very passionately about 'the black bat who brings death.' "

Kurogane stopped in mid-circuit.

"Black bat?" he said after a long time, voice very calm and remote. "On a yellow background?"

Ashura regarded him with mild surprise. "Why, yes. How did you know that?"

"I've encountered it before," Kurogane said, still in that flat-level voice. "Excuse me. I have to go now."

"Very well," Ashura said after a bemused silence. "Yukito will escort you back to your chambers."

They walked in silence, for the first part, Kurogane's brain seething so hard that he barely saw the serene beauty of the palace halls. The black bat -- the black bat crest that had been on the sword, on the arm of the figure that had murdered his mother, that had destroyed Suwa? No, surely it couldn't be the same one. _Oh yeah? Why not? How many magically appearing-disappearing, murdering bat-wielders are out there? Who says it can't be the same one?_

The fall of Valeria had been more than thirty years ago... the fall of Suwa had been barely ten years ago. Could the same man still be alive and active after all this time? _He could if he were a wizard._ What was it... what was it that Fai had said, about some type of magic that no sane men dared to try? Portals, which could cross the distance between one place and another in a blink of an eye? A portal that could admit a man, or a whole squad of men, could also admit just an arm and a sword, couldn't it?

One thing was for sure: the methods might have been different in each case, but the effects were very much the same. A country destroyed, its people slaughtered... survivors left terrorized, lives ruined...

Abruptly he turned to Yukito, startling the pale man into taking a step back. "Take me to the wizard."

Yukito blinked at him, baffled. "What -- which one?"

"To Fai! To the damn idiot, that's who!" Kurogane snarled, irrationally annoyed at having to say his name. "I want to see him. I _have_ to see him."

Yukito gave him a very long and solemn look, his pale amber eyes half-hidden behind the glass spectacles, but then he nodded, and changed direction.

  
***

  
Yukito took him to another wing of the palace; he'd been this far once, but the guards stationed at the end of the hallway had turned him back. Now Yukito said something to them in the native Ceres tongue, and they reluctantly stood aside for him.

There were more guards outside of Fai's rooms, and one stationed inside the room as well, but Kurogane had expected that, and he was getting almost as good at ignoring the presence of guards in Ceres as he was at ignoring them in Shirasagi Castle. What he hadn't expected to find in Fai's room, though, was a teenaged girl sitting beside his bed, laying a cold compress on his forehead.

She looked up and saw him, and eyes the vivid green of a summer field widened as she squeaked in surprise and shrank back. "Oh, relax!" Kurogane snapped, and tried his best to make his body language non-threatening. "I promise, I don't eat little girls."

"S-sorry." She relaxed, seemed to remember her manners, and smiled hesitantly up at him. "I - um - I don't think we've met before?"

"Kurogane," he introduced himself. After a moment of hesitation, he went around to the other side of the bed and pulled up another seat, so he wouldn't loom over her quite so badly. She was a tiny thing -- skinny-limbed and no taller than his waist. He did his best to smile at her, put her at ease. "Kurogane of Suwa. I just came to visit the w - Fai."

She reminded him a little bit of Tomoyo when she had been this age, although even as a teenager Tomoyo had been grave and dignified, solemn with the weight of responsibility. This girl was all flutters, caught in the coltish awkwardness of adolescence; her frame had begun to grow, but not filled out yet, and her arms and legs were skinny. Her clothes were bright-colored jewel tones, topped with delicate scarves that fluttered as she moved, and an intricately engraved silver headband kept her ginger-colored hair out of her face. She was too young and awkward to be called pretty, but when she smiled, it lit up her whole face.

"I'm sorry he's not awake right now," she said, her smile firming in return to his, and she held out one delicate hand for him to shake. "The doctor gave him a potion to make him sleep, you see. But it's so kind of you to come, anyway. I'm Sakura."

He gazed at Fai, trying to hide his disappointment -- at least Fai seemed to be sleeping peacefully, his breathing deep and even, some color restored to his skin. He was just trying to place the faint association the name made in his mind, when she added offhandedly, "King Ashura is my father."

Kurogane stared at her in astonishment. _This_ was Princess Sakura, Fai's betrothed? "But you're just a child!" he exclaimed despite himself.

"I'm not a child, I'm fourteen!" she said indignantly, glaring at him -- the effect was rather unconvincing, like a kitten trying to intimidate a bulldog.

If she was fourteen, then that meant that Fai was old enough to be her father, almost her grandfather! He knew that the nobility was different when it came to marriages, the royalty even more so -- but that was just ridiculous. He'd been prepared, subconsciously, to dislike Fai's fiancee, but was quite willing enough to transfer his resentment to King Ashura, for pushing such a match on her so young.

She was studying him curiously. "Suwa, isn't that a place in Nihon?" she said, yanking his attention back. "Does that mean you're from Nihon? I wasn't sure at first, because of your eyes -- I thought all Nihon people had black eyes."

"Yes, I'm from Nihon," Kurogane growled wearily; not like he hadn't had people commenting on his unusual, unnatural looks _all his life._ At least there seemed to be _one_ person in this country who hadn't already been briefed on his identity and his status as a prisoner.

"Oh! I'm sorry, did I say something wrong? I think they're very nice eyes, I just didn't know what to expect!" Sakura blushed slightly, covering her mouth with her hands. "Anyway, if you're from Nihon, what are you doing here? Are you an ambassador from Shirasagi Castle?" She eyed him with a new interest.

"No," Kurogane said, somewhat impressed by her knowledge of the outside world, for her age. "I was traveling with the -- with Fai. I came up with him before the pass collapsed."

"So you're Fai's friend!" Sakura's face lit up with that smile again, and the look she gave him made it clear that as far as she was concerned, that made them practically family. "I'm so glad to meet you! I've never had a chance to meet anyone from Nihon before. I've been practicing _nihongo_ with the other people from the court, but I've never had a chance to talk with a native speaker before. If I say something wrong, you have to tell me right away, okay Kurogane- _san_?" she added earnestly.

"Okay," Kurogane said, somewhat stunned by her enthusiasm. This had to be the first person he'd met in Ceres -- including Fai -- who didn't speak of his home country with a buried resentment and hostility. "But I don't think so, you speak it very well for someone who's never been there."

"I wish I could go there, someday." Her expression turned wistful. "What's it like? Really?"

Kurogane sat in silence. He had no idea how to begin, and he was too painfully aware of the other ears listening - Yukito, pale in the shadows, and the guard, who probably couldn't even understand what they were saying. He was no poet, no man of words. How could he tell her about the endless rows of carefully measured fields, blossoming over with rice and barley plants, shining so vivid a green in the summer sunshine that they seemed to glow with a light of their own? How could he show her the towns and villages, the wooden beams of the houses a dark weathered brown with age, plaster walls with paper charms and tiny glass chimes tinkling in the wind? How could he describe for her Shirasagi Castle, the dark glistening surface of the moat stirring with koi underneath, the stone walls towering above them under the graceful oak beams and black slate tiles of the roof? How could he make her see his home as he saw it, with these unfriendly ears listening in?

"It's a lot different from Ceres," he said lamely, well aware that this wasn't nearly enough. "It's... more spread out. More green."

She nodded eagerly, and her eyes dropped to the sleeping man on the bed. "Fai told me it's like spring and summer all year round, down there," she said, sounding envious. "There are always flowers blooming, and the trees never fully lose their leaves."

"That's not true," he objected. "We have winter, and snow and ice, too. It just -- it doesn't last as long, that's all. And it doesn't get quite as cold."

"It's not the same winter," Sakura said, her voice quiet, but certain. "Winter in the mountains lasts more than half the year. It's..." She bit her lip, and her green eyes turned dark. "It's awful, for the people up here. They have so little -- it's so hard for them, to grow all the food they need, and then they have to tithe to the castle, too..."

She looked upset, almost teary, and Kurogane shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Fai had talked about the famine situation in Ceres as well, but he'd been angry at the time, and it was easy to dismiss it as someone else's problem. Facing an upset little girl was another thing entirely. "It's their duty as subjects, to supply their king," he said gruffly.

Sakura nodded, looking miserable. "Fai- _niisan_ says I must eat, because they need a strong and healthy future leader more than they need one little girl's worth of food. But it's still... I feel so terrible. I just wish there was some way I could help them." She sighed.

Kurogane did a double-take. The word the princess had used for Fai meant 'brother,' but it was not inappropriate for a young girl to use the same word to address an unrelated older man of whom she was fond. What _was_ inappropriate, however, was using the same word to describe a man you were going to marry.

"Brother?" he said carefully. "I didn't think you were related." In fact, he didn't see how they could be.

The princess made a face. "Oh... well, we aren't, not actually," she said. "He's only my foster brother, really, because Father raised him. But he's always been like a brother to me. Ever since I was little he's always looked out for me, watched over me... played games with me, taught me things, and cheered me up when I was sad." Her green eyes softened, and she smiled down at the man in the bed with tender affection.

Kurogane rubbed his face. "And you don't think it's at all _weird_ that you're supposed to marry the man who changed your diapers when you were little?" he said sharply.

Her face fell, and Kurogane immediately regretted his question. She looked down and bit her lip, still cradling Fai's hand in her lap. After a moment she said, in a voice scarcely louder than a whisper, "Father says... it's the best match for me. Because of who he is, his blood rank is equal to my own. It will help unite our two countries, he says. And... and..."

She looked up at him, and her eyes were filled with uncertainty and a tinge of fear.

"And I know he'll never raise a hand to harm me," she said, "because I know he does care for me, and I -- I don't mind spending the rest of my life with him, I love him. What more could I ask for in a marriage?"

Kurogane didn't know what to say to that, so he looked away, breaking eye contact. He couldn't understand what it was like to be in her position, not really -- to have so little control over your own life that you knew, someday, you might be bartered off to a total stranger. Royals. Gods, how were they not all insane?

His gaze fell on Fai, so dead to the world that none of their conversation had roused him. He wished Fai was awake, but at the same time, it was a relief that he wasn't; he had no idea what to say to him. How to say what was seething in his mind. _Hello, wizard, it's nice to see you again, oh and I hear that your brother was murdered forty years ago? By the way, I talked to Ashura today, and he violated your privacy and told me all of your most painful secrets? Sorry that your parents were a pair of worthless scumbags? Sorry to hear that your childhood was raped and taken away from you?_

What it all came down to in the end was that he didn't know this man sleeping on the bed in front of him. He didn't know him at all. The happy Fai that he knew was just a shell, an illusion. And that hurt, a lot.

"He never told me," Kurogane said. "He never told me that he was engaged... or that had a little sister."

Sakura bit her lip. "Well... he couldn't have, really, not even if he wanted to."

"Why not?"

"Nobody's allowed to tell any outsiders about me," Sakura said. "It's a law. Father says it's to protect me." A hint of reservations in her voice said that she had her own doubts about that edict, but not openly.

But the royal politics of Ceres didn't concern Kurogane. Or they shouldn't, but... Kurogane moved around, stared down at the sleeping face. "He never told me a lot of things," he said, quietly. "He never told me he was the King's son. He never told me he was the senior wizard of Ceres. He let me assume that he was -- that I was -- " he broke off, struggling to articulate the betrayal he felt.

Fai had never lied, no, he'd never directly lied, but he'd _implied_ that he was of lower status, just a normal everyday person -- well, and a wizard. He'd led Kurogane to believe that the two of them were equals; but they weren't.

"Maybe he was afraid to tell you?" Sakura suggested tentatively.

"Why would he be afraid of _me?_ " Kurogane said, offended and angered by the suggestion. He thought of Yukito's words, in the receiving hall the first night they'd come in. "Was he afraid that I would try to take him hostage or hurt him, if I found out who he was? Did he think I was that kind of scum?"

"Maybe he was afraid that if you knew who he was, you wouldn't want to be his friend any more," Sakura said quietly.

"That's ridiculous!" Kurogane snapped.

Sakura raised her head, and her penetrating green eyes met his. "Was he right?" she said.

Kurogane was silent for a long moment, until the pause became too uncomfortable. "Well, it isn't just up to me!" he snapped. "He made it pretty clear, when he --" _tried to kill me in my sleep,_ he was about to say, but hesitated, and changed that mid-sentence to " -- when he argued with me about the war with Ceres, that he considered _me_ to be his enemy. If that's the way he feels, I can't stop being who I am!"

The girl looked at him for a long moment, and then shook her head firmly. "I don't think he thinks that at all," she said. "I think he cares about you a lot, no matter who you are or where you're from. All that matters is that you're Kurogane-san."

He knew she was at least partly right, as little as he wanted to admit it to himself, Ashura wouldn't be able to use him to blackmail Fai if the idiot didn't somehow care for him. But that didn't mean that all other considerations could be just swept away. "It still matters," he said.

Unexpectedly, she smiled. "You know, it makes me really happy," she said. When he looked at her incredulously, she laughed and said, "That you two are friends. If two such very different men can become such good friends, then maybe there's a way for Ceres and Nihon to live in peace, after all."

He left the bedchamber, back through the white-glowing palace walls, with those words still ringing in his ears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What happened to the twin princes was actually reflective of an even older and more brutal set of infanticide practices in Valeria. In the old kingdom, twins were not merely bad luck; identical twins were born when a demon, a doppelganger, attached itself to an unborn baby. (Sometimes they were let to grow up for a year or two, in order to determine if they were truly identical or merely similar-looking fraternal twins; fraternal twins didn't carry the same stigma.)
> 
> The question then became how to determine which twin was human and which was a doppelganger. Since demons were thought not to need to breathe, the traditional method of identifying them was trial by water, which meant holding both twins underwater simultaneously until one of them drowned. If the other twin was still alive, it was assumed to be the demon, and the surviving twin was then burned alive.
> 
> Not that either Fai nor Ashura would have any way of knowing this, but the queen actually could not bear to see her babies killed, so she begged the king to lock them away instead. Imprisoning them and slowly starving them to death was seen as a more civilized alternative to the usual method of trial by water. If things had not been as confused in Ceres as they were when Fai finally died, and if Ashura had not invaded shortly after, then Yuui probably would have ended up being burned as a demon after all.


	13. Second Partings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Fai is an emotional coward, Kurogane is a jealous asshole, and Ashura is Darth F***ing Vader.

Kurogane stalked down the hall in a foul humor. The servants of Ruval palace tended to avoid him at the best of times, but now they actively fled from sight when they saw him coming, and the guards all took a careful hold on their weapons as he passed.

He'd very nearly lost his temper in an ugly confrontation with one of the apprentice wizards -- Errol, the brat's name was, or maybe Eriol -- not that he cared. For all that he was an undergrown squirt of a kid, he was told the boy had enough magic for two men, and he certainly had enough arrogance for four. Worse, he didn't bother to muffle his disdain and hatred for Nihon in a cloak of civility as the others did; he'd actually taunted Kurogane, goaded him with insults about his family and breeding that would have cost a fellow countryman blood, let alone a four-eyed twerp of a teenager with more magic than good sense.

Only the knowledge that the wizard _wanted_ him to lose his temper and attack, and so draw retribution from the king, had enabled Kurogane to keep his hands off the skinny brat's neck until Yukito had stepped in to break up the impending brawl.

He'd been in a bad enough mood after that, and it hadn't helped matters to come storming out of the informal mess hall where the confrontation had taken place and to see King Ashura walking the other way down the hallway -- with Fai at his heels. Fai had glanced his way only once, and hadn't spoken or moved to acknowledge him at all.

He hadn't seen the wizard again since that one bedside encounter, although Princess Sakura had come to visit him several more times and conversations with her were a rare bright spot in an otherwise gloomy week. Without Yukito along to vouch for him the guards continued to turn him back, and he had yet to catch Fai out in the libraries, the training salles where the wizards worked together in bafflingly arcane drills, or the mess hall.

Kurogane wondered if Fai was eating enough, without him there to sit on him, and kicked himself for wondering. Obviously, it wasn't his problem any more.

Just when it seemed like the day couldn't go any worse, the King had requested his attendance. Now. In some ways, you could come halfway across the world and kings and emperors wouldn't change at all.

The guard which had delivered the message brought him to a small receiving chamber; not the throne room, but more of a room of state or business. There were charts and maps pasted to the walls, some with writing on them, in the strange curling script of Ceres which Kurogane couldn't decipher. Ashura was there, as well as Yukito and several other men he didn't recognize.

"Well?" Kurogane said. He supposed he ought to be more diplomatic, but after the way his morning had gone he was just not in the mood. "What do you want?"

The king glanced up at him, and said something in a murmur to the advisors, who nodded in acknowledgment, gathered up an armload of papers from the desk, and departed through the chamber's other door. "Lord Suwa. You make a terrible diplomat, you know."

"I'm not here to be diplomatic," Kurogane said. "You called me here. Is this about the idiot brat from this morning?"

Ashura smiled dryly. "Hardly. Young Eriol is at a difficult stage in his training; he has learned much about power, but nothing about control. Actually, there is a different matter that I wished to speak with you about."

"Well, what is it then?" Kurogane said.

Ashura's smile faded, and he placed his hands on the table and leaned forward, his eyes narrowing dangerously. "Lord Suwa, I understand that you have been having several conversations with my daughter."

"Your daughter? Sakura?" Kurogane was somewhat startled; this was not a problem he'd seen coming. "Well, what of it? She's a very sweet girl, just a shame that she got stuck with you for a father."

Ashura frowned fiercely. "She is not to have any contact with outsiders! Your even knowing her name, let alone speaking with her, is already a violation of several Ceres laws. I order you to cease all contact with her at once. I will have no more of you polluting my daughter with inappropriate notions."

 _"What?"_ Kurogane stared in disbelief, stung with the unfairness of having the last bright spots in this hellish palace pulled out of reach. "I have neither said nor done _anything_ to the princess which could be considered inappropriate! She's only fourteen years old, by the Gods --" and this brought him right onto his buried disgust and fury to the king over this whole matter. "What could I possibly say or do that's more _inappropriate_ than forcing her to marry a man who's three times her age?"

"That is precisely the attitude that I will not have you take around her!" Ashura snapped. "This is none of your concern, outsider. My daughter _will_ marry lord Flowright, and their children will bring a new power to Ceres."

There was another moment when things seemed to click over for Kurogane, and he understood exactly what the king had in mind. "So _that's_ what this is about?" he demanded. "Some kind of twisted -- breeding program?"

"As a king, I must think of the future needs of my country as well as the present," Ashura said icily. His eyes fell to one of the paper lists on the table in front of it, and he gave it a brooding frown. "Sakura has power in her that came to her from her mother; she in turn will be mother to the future wizards of Ceres. It is my ongoing frustration that I have yet been unable to find suitable mates for my other wizards; I have too few women among them, and neither of them are suited for childbearing."

He glanced up at Kurogane, still fuming in the doorway, and a malicious light touched his eye. "Perhaps I will find wives for them when I conquer Nihon; after all, most of the magic-users in your country are female, are they not?"

Without thinking, Kurogane took two steps forward towards, his hand going to his hip where Souhi would normally be sheathed. It took a great effort to halt himself, to wait for the boil of fury to subside from his vision and unclench his jaw. "I'm getting really damn sick of the way you treat people you _claim_ to care about," he snarled. "If I had my swords in my hand right now and could challenge you to a duel, I'd teach you a lesson about manipulating people that you'd never forget --"

Ashura was staring at him intently, and Kurogane broke off, afraid for a moment that he really had gone too far. But he was so angry he just didn't care. "Very well," Ashura said abruptly. "Shall we duel, then?"

"Your Majesty!" one of the bodyguards protested, but with a faint tone that suggested he already knew it was hopeless.

"If you think -- " Kurogane stopped, staring at Ashura. "Wait, you're serious?"

"Perfectly. I did say that I would take you up on your offer once we were safely back at the palace, did I not? I never go back on my word."

  
***

  
Half an hour later found the two of them in an indoors training salle, the space wide and echoing and free of the decorations that marked the rest of the palace. It felt both alien and familiar to Kurogane at once; alien for being an enclosed space with a roof overhead, not open to the sky as it would have been in his own country, but comfortable and familiar nonetheless.

He had his swords back, although not his armor; Ashura hadn't offered it, and considering that the king wasn't wearing armor either, Kurogane decided not to ask.

"Your Majesty, please reconsider this foolishness," his bodyguard kept pleading with him, although Ashura seemed more amused than moved by his fussing. "This man is an enemy, and deliberately exposing yourself to him like this -- it's completely pointless to put yourself in danger!"

"In danger?" Ashura asked absently, although his eyes were on Kurogane as he checked over the condition of his swords, scowling at the faint patina that he hadn't had the opportunity to clean off them since escaping the cave-in, and didn't have time for now. "Do you have so little confidence in my skills in battle, then?"

"Of course not," the guard argued, "but any unnecessary risk --"

"Am I not a warrior then, and a leader of warriors?" Ashura demanded. "How can I lead my people in war, if I ask them to take risks I will not take myself? Soon I will ride out into battle, not against one single warrior but against a legion, and how am I to do that if I am too cowardly to face an armed opponent?"

"No, Your Majesty, I didn't suggest --" the guard said in a horrified tone. Kurogane almost felt sorry for him -- it was his job to keep the King safe, after all, and that was hard to do when your own sovereign refused to behave.

Ashura interrupted him. "I have never been a coward before," he said, "and I do not intend to start now. Besides, as you said, this man is a warrior of Nihon. If I cannot face him in single combat, then what right have I to make war on his country?"

"I can agree with that," Kurogane said. Personally, he was fine with any pretty rhetoric that Ashura spouted as long as it brought the other man within reach of his blade. He had no idea what kind of training in swordsmanship Ashura had, but he doubted he could have much experience sitting in a palace all day up in the mountains; and he was intensely aware of his own experience, battle-prowess honed against hundreds of demons stronger than any single man could be.

On the other hand, he couldn't exactly ignore the consequences of killing the monarch of a country, even in fair single combat, in the middle of his palace and surrounded on all sides by his warriors and wizards. Regardless of Ashura's ideals, he couldn't see that ending well for himself. But did it really matter if he survived, if he could strike such a blow in service to his country?

 _And what will it do to Fai, if you kill the king he so adores, if they blame him for bringing you here?_ a tiny voice whispered in his mind, but he pushed it aside, blocked it out as he did all painful thoughts of the man these days. There was no way he could foresee or plan for all the consequences. He could only control his own choices, and he couldn't hesitate.

"I don't plan to hold back," he told Ashura as they took up their stances in the center of the salle. The king's weapon was a fine one, from what he could see of it from here, good rich Ceres steel with an intricately worked crossguard, and blue jewels glinting from the handle. It was a pretty weapon, but there was no way to tell how strong it was until he felt the shock of it against his own blade.

The king smiled. "I should hope not. I would hate to be bored if you did."

Kurogane hesitated, studying the king narrowly; where was Ashura was getting his confidence? Was he not enough of a warrior to know when he was outmatched, or was this just the hopeless arrogance of kings?

No. No hesitation. Kurogane inclined his head and body forward in a short, formalized bow, the ritual of honor from one warrior to another, and then attacked.

He came at the king fast and low, in a stance that was guard as well as attack. The king stood his ground, a small smile on his face as he took Kurogane's charge standing. Just as he reached sword range, Kurogane turned his arm and swept his sword upwards in a fast, brutal slash that would have opened his opponent's torso from hip to shoulder.

It never connected; Ashura's sword swept down to block the blade, and their hilts locked with a thunderous clang. Kurogane was jolted by the force of the block; he looked up, startled, into Ashura's face. The king hadn't given a single step, he'd simply absorbed Kurogane's charge without a change of expression on his face.

There was no time to stand and gawk in a swordfight. Kurogane shifted his weight and turned his body, throwing their locked swords to the side and leaving the king wide open. As fast as he got his blade back around, though, Ashura was barely a hair's breadth behind him, and he caught the razor-sharp edge of Kurogane's blade on the flat of his sword as it swept down from overhead. This time, Kurogane caught the faintest flicker of a smile over Ashura's face, and steel scraped with teeth-aching noise as Ashura drew back and returned the blow, sword flickering snake-quick towards Kurogane's face.

Kurogane batted the cut aside, but he was forced to move back, relinquish his position. As the duel continued, the ringing clash of steel filling to the rafters again, Kurogane found himself hastily revising his estimate of the older man's prowess. Ashura was fast -- and strong. Kurogane was more used to fighting oni than humans, and he knew that the force of his blows were powerful enough to cut through the armor and bone of those huge, monstrous beasts -- but meeting Ashura's strength head-on felt like swinging into a stone wall.

The momentum of the fight was going against him. He felt sweat breaking out on his brow, and growled low under his breath as he saw that faint, mocking smile on Ashura's face again. He feinted, then switched sides, sword whistling in and around in a cut that should have hamstrung the other man.

But Ashura moved faster than he would have thought, sword flashing down like lightning to parry him. The force behind the blow was so great that Kurogane felt the shock of hit travel up his arms to make his teeth rattle, and he actually skidded backwards across the floor for several inches before he regained his footing, and dropped into a low, defensive stance.

Gods, the man was strong. Unnaturally strong -- it was more like facing a demon than a human opponent. Kurogane narrowed his eyes at the king, and shifted his grip slightly. If Ashura was more like a demon than a man, then perhaps he was going about this all wrong -- perhaps he should be fighting him like a demon.

He drew a breath and gathered his ki, felt it flowing like molten fury down his arms and down along the length of the steel -- _"Senryuu hikogen!"_

The sudden roar of flame almost took him by surprise. Perhaps it was just the change of scenery, an enclosed salle rather than an open wilderness, that had made him forget how strong the fire really was. Or perhaps it was the frustration of too many days locked in this place, the accumulation of stinging slights and humiliations on top of the bitter helplessness in the face of the horrors going on in the outside world, which he was unable to stop -- whatever it was, the resulting wave of flames roared across the room like a hurricane.

The enclosed stone walls channeled and magnified the shock of heated air, and the backwash nearly knocked him off his feet, but he kept his stance anyway. No enemy should still be standing after that attack, but he stayed in his wary crouch anyway, keeping his eyes on the place where Ashura had been before the blast hit him.

And his eyes widened in shock and disbelief when the flames cleared to see Ashura still standing, his clothes and hair barely singed, holding one glowing-white hand in the air before him.

"Impressive," Ashura said dryly. "Lord Kurogane, you should have said that this was to be a duel of sorcery as well as swords. Now that I know that, the rules change."

"I didn't -- " Kurogane said, but Ashura raised his hand, the glow flaring brighter, and clenched it into a fist. All of a sudden a wave of invisible force, as strong as the back-blow from Kurogane's hikogen attack, washed over him. He tried to raise his guard, dodge aside, but it was like his feet were mired in quicksand, his arms weighed down with lead. An immense invisible hand seemed to wrench his swords out of his grasp, and they clange and skittered noisily across the floor.

With every second the pressure increased, until he was gasping for air against the feeling of steel bands wrapped around his chest. An immense weight was crushing him down, and he had to brace his hands and lock his arms to prevent it from driving him to the floor. This was no natural force; there could only be one explanation. "You! You're a damn wizard!" he gasped out accusingly.

"I? A wizard?" Ashura tossed his head back and laughed. "Oh, no! I've never had the time, or indeed the patience, to devote myself to study. Too many books, too many words and runes and languages that must be learned first. I spent my time pursuing other things, and found others with a greater knack for wizardry than mine. But magic... yes, I've always had some of that, a talent that has become stronger over the years. Much like you do."

"I'm not a wizard," Kurogane growled, still struggling to keep his head up against the invisible pressure. His neck strained painfully and sweat ran down under his collar, but he would not, _would_ not bow his head to Ashura.

Ashura only smiled. "You are, no matter how much you choose to deny it. The scorch-marks on my walls are all the proof that's required. But you have so long bound and constrained it that you don't even know how to use the power you have. A pity. If you'd like, I can offer you a position among my men as well. Swear fealty to me, and I'll number you among my wizards and train you in the power you've always denied."

This galvanized Kurogane to raise his head to meet Ashura's eyes, if only so that he could glare murder at him. _"No,"_ he said, a deep rasping snarl in his voice. "Never."

"Very well." Ashura closed his hand and lowered his arm, and the invisible pressure pinning Kurogane to the sword finally lifted. He gasped, and scrambled quickly back to his feet. His swords were lying on the salle floor, just out of reach; he eyed them with longing, but he had no illusions that a second round would end any differently than the first.

It occurred to him, a bit belatedly, that he'd gone about it all wrong when Ashura had made his offer. He ought to have played along, pretended to swear to Ashura -- at least long enough to find an opportunity to strike, or possibly to escape. But that would have required a degree of deception that Kurogane had never really had the talent for; and the thought of swearing a false oath, even to one such as Ashura, left a foul taste in his mouth.

Ashura was watching him, black eyes penetrating, with a small smile hovering around his mouth. He looked like he could see into Kurogane's mind and read his every thought, and he had the uneasy thought that for all he knew, Ashura could.

The king spoke. "You are dismissed, Lord Suwa. You may take your weapons with you as you go, if you wish. I understand that to the warrior caste of Nihon, they are quite important symbols of status."

Kurogane picked up his swords, then stared at the king in disbelief. "You plan to let me run around the castle armed?" he said. "Are you out of your mind?"

The king shrugged. "And why not? You cannot escape into the teeth of winter unaided. You have too much honor -- and far too much sense -- to strike out at my servants, when you know what retribution that would bring on yourself... and others. And you've already learned the futility of facing _me_ in combat. What have I to fear from you?"

What indeed. Kurogane set his teeth, secured his swords on his belt anyway, and stalked out.

  
***

  
When he'd gone far enough that some of the rage had boiled off, he found himself alone in one of the quiet, brightly-lit outer hallways. There was no one around; the servant who'd been coming down this passageway had taken one look at his expression and fled.

 _What am I doing here?_

He stopped in the middle of the hallway, staring at one of the windows; like all the others, reinforced by an elegant metal lattice. He pushed aside the velvet curtains, found the metal latch of the casement window, and shoved the heavy window outwards.

He was met by a wall of raging whiteness, and he stared out into it, not able to see more than a few feet into the teeth of the storm. It had been days since he'd seen the outside world, and the palace halls were so quiet and warm -- relatively speaking -- that he'd naively assumed that the storm had died down. If anything, it had gained in strength; the wind shrieked past the palace walls, lashing snow and ice particles hard enough to sting his hands and face even muted by the thickness of the windowpane.

Only a little blue-gray daylight was able to pierce that storm, seeming wan and flimsy compared to the bright lantern light of the hallway. The palace was its own little world, protected by thick stone walls and magics, and there was no stepping outside of it. Not without winter gear which he didn't have and didn't even know how to use, and probably not without the aid of magic. No wonder they didn't bother to lock him up, to guard him; the very winter of Ceres was his jailer.

The blizzard winds howled past the open casement, and Kurogane felt like howling too. Gods, he wanted to go home. He should never have come here; he'd been a fool, a childish fool, to think that he could somehow solve two country's problems all by himself, just by wishing it. He wanted to be home, and not just in Shirasagi Castle or familiar Edo, but back to his old life -- patrolling, hunting and slaying demons. At least he'd been serving a purpose there, fighting to make the world a better place and protect those he loved. Here -- here he was nothing but a pawn, serving no one's ends except King Ashura.

"Kurogane," a voice said from behind him; a familiar voice, laced with exhaustion and now surprise. Kurogane let go of the window with his numbed fingers, letting the force of the wind push the window shut, and turned.

Fai was standing in the corridor behind him, and Kurogane looked him up and down, sizing up his condition. He was walking, but only with the aid of a dark wooden crutch, the crossbar of it gripped in his good hand. His other arm was bound across his chest in a sling, and Kurogane noted the white of plaster peeking out of the edge of it. No doubt there was a similar cast on his broken leg, hidden from view by the white fur-trimmed robe of the court wizards.

His silver insignia, Kurogane noted, was far more intricate and extensive than any of the other wizards. He was getting some practice at deciphering the meanings of the various ranks, but he had no trouble parsing this one: First Senior Wizard to the king. _Another thing you lied to me about_ , he thought furiously.

Fai's hair had been cleaned and combed, and tied neatly at the nape of his neck, the white ribbon echoing the narrow bandage encircling his temples. His face was bruised, but clean, and his eyes as he faced Kurogane were calm and sane once more.

Fai smiled at him, friendly and warm. "I'm sorry, that was rude of me," Fai said. "I meant -- Lord Suwa. King Ashura is in a council just now, and I thought I saw you heading this way..."

The formal use of title, the same form of address that Ashura and the other wizards used, hurt even worse than using his full name had; it only emphasized the distance between them. For a moment Kurogane's vision darkened as the gulf between them yawned impassable.

Fai was not what Kurogane had thought, had never been what he'd thought. Fai was a prince, royal both by blood and by station; betrothed to a princess, heir to two kingdoms. Fai was the de facto commander of a legion of wizards and who knew how many soldiers, with powers that Kurogane could scarcely guess at after a month of traveling with him. He had nothing in common, nothing at all, with the indigent son of a minor provincial noble with no land behind his empty title, who sold his sword into the service of others for a living. There could be no common ground between them.

He'd thought that Fai had come to return his regard, care about him in turn -- but how could he know? How could he know anything about what the wizard really felt or thought, when Fai had never been honest with him, not for a moment?

"Call me what you like," Kurogane said shortly, as if it was all the same to him. "If you're going to bother calling on me at all. I'd assumed you'd forgotten I existed, Lord Flowright -- although the guards outside your corridor certainly know who I am."

Fai's smile faltered. "You -- tried to come to see me?" he asked, a guilty look crossing his face.

"Why not? You certainly never came to see me," Kurogane replied bitterly. He felt almost driven to say the words, although he knew it was a bad idea; he couldn't stop himself. "I suppose you don't need me any more, do you? You've got plenty of other people here to look after you. Plenty of adults to protect you and pick up your messes. You're free to drop me like a hot rock."

Fai was staring at him, an odd mixture of disbelief and hurt on his face. It made Kurogane bitterly happy to see it, to share that hurt, although he knew he should feel ashamed. But he wanted to hurt Fai back, make him feel as small and lost and humiliated as he'd made Kurogane feel.

"Is that what all this has been about?" Fai said incredulously. "You think of me as some kind of... of _child_ who needs to be protected and controlled? I'm old enough to be your _father_."

"It's hard to remember sometimes, when you act like you're young enough to be my son," Kurogane snarled back. "Is this the price of magical immortality? Perpetual childhood? I'll pass, thanks."

"Kurogane, what --"

"Forget it. All I want to know from you is _why_ ," Kurogane cut him off. "Why did you disobey your orders and refuse to kill me? Why did you beg Ashura to spare my life? What possible motivation could you have?"

"Because, I, I..." Fai raised his head and searched Kurogane's face beseechingly; whatever he found there, or didn't find, the light in his eyes died a little.

He licked his lips before he spoke, and Kurogane tensed, sensing another lie coming. "Because I owed you," Fai said in a small voice. "You saved my life, you are a good man. It wasn't right to betray you, who'd never done any harm to me. I just wanted to repay you, that's all."

"Well now you've done that," Kurogane said in a biting tone. "Is that it, then? Scales are even, debt repaid? Neither of us owes the other one anything?"

"I didn't mean that," Fai said.

"Then what did you mean?!" Kurogane shouted. "As soon we get back to Ruval palace, it's like I don't exist to you any more!"

Fai's eyes dropped. "I'm sorry," he said. "I -- it's not that I didn't want to see you... but King Ashura forbade me."

"And you just leap into action to obey King Ashura's commands, don't you?" Kurogane said sarcastically. The image of the two of them walking down the white hallways swirled up before his vision again; Fai's eyes on Ashura's face, his expression alight and eager. "As soon as you're in the same room as him you act like you don't have a brain in your head. You let him walk all over you like you're completely spineless. It's disgusting."

Shock warred with disbelief -- and hurt -- in Fai's face, finally settling into anger. "What would you have me do? He's my _King,"_ Fai began. "He commands my absolute loyalty -- my absolute obedience, I --"

"I serve a king too, have you forgotten?" Kurogane interrupted him impatiently. "Fealty is one thing, loyalty is another, but that doesn't mean you have to *worship* the very ground that he walks on."

"You have no idea what is between Ashura and I," Fai said in a low voice. "What I owe to him. What he did for me when I was a child --"

"Is no more than _any decent human being_ would have done!" Kurogane shouted. "That doesn't mean that you have to be his _slave_ thirty years later! That doesn't obligate you to _crawl_ to him! Especially not to an arrogant snake of a man, a twisted predator who --"

" _Stop_ ," Fai shouted, and Kurogane broke off, staring at Fai; he'd never heard him speak so forcefully.

"Never speak of Ashura that way again," Fai said, in a voice that was a thin skin of calm over boiling fury underneath. "You have no right to talk about him, or tell me what I owe to anyone. You will _never_ speak of him in that manner again in my presence!"

"Or what? You'll kill me?" he sneered. "Are you that afraid to hear what I have to say? That afraid that it might be the truth?"

"I wouldn't do that," Fai said flatly. "But I can arrange it so that you never speak another word in your life. It's too much for you to understand, isn't it? That I follow Lord Ashura not because of any sense of obligation, but because I _love_ him."

"Fine," Kurogane said. He felt that coldness wash over him at that word, felt it settle into the pit of his stomach with an odd sense of finality. _That's it, then_ , he thought. _He's made his choice; and he chose Ashura_.

As he walked past him, leaning heavily on his cane, Fai turned his head and shot Kurogane a piercing blue glare, like the blast of arctic winds. "I guess that's not a word you'd understand, love."

Kurogane stood in the cold corridor, watching Fai walk away.

***

  
Inside the palace, it was easy to forget about the world outside. The walls were thick, but the silence and bright warmth that enveloped the castle corridors and rooms were even more than that should account for. Even Shirasagi Castle could be cold and miserable in the wintertime, despite the straw rushes and wood-and-paper partitions that made up the interior, and Ruval had no such protection against raw stone. Kurogane wondered if magic was responsible for that odd insulation, as it was for the lamps that never went out.

He'd forced the small window in his chambers partway open and propped it with an iron bar. It made the little room colder than the fire in the hearth could combat, and the icy whistling of the wind kept him from being able to sleep, but he still preferred that to the unnerving sense of isolation from the real world. It felt like it was his only connection to reality.

Finally, after days of unrelenting gale, the force of the wind had dropped. Icy frost embroidered the windowsill and glass pane, and snow still fell in a dizzying shower past his window, but at least it wasn't falling sideways any more. Staring out the window at the silent, icy mountains, Kurogane wondered how many soldiers of Nihon had died in the blizzard.

"Lord Suwa, please come with me."

Kurogane looked up to see Yukito standing in the door to his chambers. With a grimace, he tossed aside what he'd been doing -- just filling time, not like there was anything useful for him to do in this castle -- and stood up, settling his swords more comfortably on his belt. Even if it had been politely worded, it wasn't really a summons he could ignore.

"All right, I'm coming," he grumbled, and followed the pale-haired mage out.

For a change, no guards trailed them; the ones stationed outside of Kurogane's room and down the hallway politely ignored them. But Kurogane knew better to think that the lack of a guard indicated trust. Even assuming he could take out Yukito -- and he made no such assumption -- there was nowhere for him to run, now was there?

"So what does Ashura want with me now?" he asked, pacing behind Yukito.

"King Ashura has left the castle," Yukito replied, glancing over his shoulder at Kurogane. "The storm has ended, but the war goes on. There were things that required his attention."

Kurogane's face darkened with a frown. He hated this, being shut up in the castle while the king and his wizards went about wreaking havoc on his country. Then his mind made the connection. "If Ashura isn't here, then who's summoning me? Is it the w - Fai?" His heart beat faster at the thought, although whether in pleasure or anticipation of another fight, he wasn't sure.

"Lord Flowright was accompanying the King. He is going to assist him in his tasks."

They were leaving the bright, broad upper hallways of the palace now, entering the back corridors more often employed by servants. The floors were sloping steadily downwards, and Kurogane looked around him in confusion. "Wait a moment. If Ashura's not here and the wizard's not here, then who the hell asked to see me?"

Yukito glanced back at him, and a faint amusement lit his eyes. "I never said anyone had asked to see you."

"Then where are we going?" When Yukito did not respond -- except to pick up the pace -- Kurogane halted in the middle of the corridor, forcing Yukito to turn and face him. "What's going on here? If you're hoping to lead me into some kind of ambush from your fellow wizards, now that your boss isn't around, I've got no intention of walking into it blindly."

Yukito sighed, and brushed his hair out of his eyes. "Men of war are always so paranoid," he muttered to himself.

Kurogane folded his arms and set his jaw. Yukito looked back up at him, a serious expression on his face. "All right," he said. "Hold still. This won't hurt."

"What --" Kurogane broke off as Yukito moved, faster than he would have expected, and framed Kurogane's face with his hands, fingers just touching Kurogane's temple. He just barely managed to restrain his first impulse, to draw his sword and lash out at the attacker, but that left him frozen in place for a moment too long.

It felt like something bright and warm flashed from Yukito's fingers, receding and disappearing into the back of his mind. Kurogane stared as Yukito withdrew. "What the hell did you just do to me?" he managed to say.

"Just a little blockage on your long-term memory," Yukito said. "Don't worry. It's not permanent. But in a few hours you won't remember any of this conversation." He started to turn away, stopping when Kurogane lunged forward and grabbed the fur-trimmed collar of his robe.

"Wait a minute! Who said you had permission to go messing with my memory?" Kurogane flared, feeling a little panicked at the thought of someone playing with his mind, no matter how many pretty reassurances he gave. "What's going on?"

Yukito tried to pull away, found that he couldn't -- Kurogane couldn't defend himself physically, maybe, but that didn't mean he was any kind of pushover -- and looked back into his face with a cool expression. "I'm sorry, but it was necessary," he said. "What going on is that I'm helping you escape, and there will be a lot of people who will be very excited to know how it was done. So it's best all around that you don't remember."

"You're going to help _me_ escape?" Shock loosened Kurogane's grip, enough that Yukito was able to get free. A spark of hope flared deep inside him, along with wild suspicion. "Why?"

"Because you're causing a disruption to the entire palace just by being here," Yukito answered. "Because you're causing a lot of pain to someone I have great respect and admiration for. Mostly, because you're a disaster waiting to happen."

"What do you mean?" Kurogane said, not sure which of those three he wanted clarification to.

Yukito sighed, pressing one hand against his eyes. "Ashura believes that you're an honorable man, and that your sense of honor will keep you bound to your parole. But very soon things are going to happen in this war which you won't, as an honorable man, be able to let pass."

A chill stole down Kurogane's back, and he tried to figure out what terrible thing Yukito could be referring to. "What about Fai?" Kurogane asked finally. "Does he know that you're helping me?"

Yukito shook his head. "What Fai knows, Ashura soon knows," he said quietly. "Fai cannot shield his thoughts from him, not even if he tries. But Ashura doesn't keep the rest of us on such a short leash as him. I have the trust of the King and total freedom of the palace; no one will suspect me. And since Fai was with Ashura all the time, Ashura will have no reason to punish him for your escape."

At some faint echo, Yukito turned his head to look down the corridor, and then he put a hand on Kurogane's elbow and pulled him along. "Come on. I made sure none of the guards could see you, but I still don't want to risk anyone coming along and catching us down here."

Kurogane allowed himself to be pulled along. A part of him perversely wanted to stay, to find Ashura and stop him from doing -- whatever he was going to do -- but the greater part of his logical mind knew that was impossible. Ashura was already well beyond his reach, and if there was some chance he could take advantage of his absence to escape...

"Where are we going?" he asked, as they passed through more dark stone corridors, the bright lamps that had been so common upstairs becoming fewer and fewer. They kept on sloping downwards, and Kurogane had a feeling they were to the sub-basement level at least.

"There's something beneath the mountain that's been sleeping for a long, long time, since before the palace was built, since long before Ashura's line became kings. No one knows about it but me."

Something in his palace that even the king didn't know about? How was that possible? "If it's so secret, how'd you find out about it?" Kurogane asked.

"Because it's my job to see everything in this kingdom," Yukito answered. "I set the border wards that hold against hostile magic, the veils that block out unfriendly sight and scrying charms, and the alarms that sound if any tries to cross into our kingdom. I maintain the connections to the gramerhains in each village, so that in case of disaster or invasion they can alert us instantly. I read the future in the stars, and try to determine what must be from what may not be. I scry over every inch of this mountain domain, on the ground, above it, and under it. No magic as strong and powerful as this one could stay hidden from me for long."

Kurogane nearly tripped over the rough stone floor as Yukito's words registered. _I read the future in the stars_. "You're a yumemi," he said disbelievingly. "One gifted with the ability to see the future in dreams..."

Yukito stopped and put a hand on the dark corridor walls, staring intently at the cracks in the stone. "My sight is not limited to dreams," he said quietly. "Although sometimes the things I can see are so faint and fragmented, and so disconnected from reality, that they may as well be dreams. But yes, I was born with such a power."

He pulled Kurogane abruptly to the side, and what had appeared to be just another section of stone walls suddenly melted away before their eyes. Inside was a stone ramp, curving steeply away downwards. It was completely dark; Yukito said a soft word in an unknown language, and the end of his staff lit with an eerie blue-white glow.

"This way," he said.

They went down, and down, until Kurogane was dizzy with the turns and completely disoriented. He had no idea how far they had come, but this certainly felt like the 'heart of the mountain.' A faint glow was beginning to show from somewhere up ahead, although it was hard to make it out against the witchlight from Yukito's staff. Then they turned another corner on the ramp, and came abruptly to flat ground; a chamber, carved out of solid stone, hundreds of feet below the palace above.

It wasn't a large chamber, and mostly empty; the only distinguishing feature was a raised dais in the center of the room; it was from there that the faint light emanated. Mounted on it was an upright stone ring about three yards in diameter, paler gray than the rock of the surrounding chambers and smooth without seam or angle. The light from Yukito's staff played over the surface of the stone, illuminating a field of intricately carved runes and stone channels.

"This is the Heart of the Mountain," Yukito said; his voice was hushed with something very like awe. "There is nothing else like it in the world; the arts for the creation of these are long since lost to us. Ever since I found it I have searched for the knowledge to understand how it was made, but we have only fragments of the old tomes remaining."

Kurogane studied the stone ring in puzzlement, walking slowly around it. Even if he hadn't spent the last month hanging around a wizard it would have been obvious that it was intensely magical; but what its purpose could be he had no idea. "Yes, but what does it _do?"_ he asked.

"It is the rarest and most difficult of all magical artifacts -- a stable portal," Yukito said. "Once it's activated, you can step through this ring and immediately find yourself in another part of the world."

Kurogane, who had begun to reach out to touch the engraved stone, jerked his hand back. "A portal?" he demanded in astonishment. "But I thought those were incredibly dangerous!"

"To those without sufficient knowledge and control, they are," Yukito answered. "But this one is permanent and securely built, right in the very foundations of the mountain. The knowledge and control were invested in it long ago -- it is perfectly safe."

Kurogane stared at the unassuming stone ring. "Where does it lead?" he said finally.

Yukito sighed. "Once upon a time, with sufficient knowledge of how to use it -- anywhere," he said. "But the spells to guide it are lost along with the arts of creation. Now it will lead to just one place -- to its sister stone ring down in the plains, in the foundations of the ancient castle of Shirasaki."

Kurogane whirled around and gawked at Yukito as the meaning sunk in. "Are you telling me that there's a portal that leads directly from Ruval to Shirasagi?" he said in a shaking voice. "And -- the other way around as well?"

Yukito nodded. His face was hard to read. "Returning, of course, would require having a willing and capable wizard on the other end," he added offhandedly.

"But this could end the war!" Kurogane exclaimed, torn between horror and excitement. Whose favor it would end in, of course, would depend on who made a move through it first. "Does King Ashura know about this?"

"Of course not," Yukito said as he stepped forward, and began running his hands over the intricately carved stone. A glow began to collect where his hands touched, matching the white-blue glow of his staff. "Nor _will_ he know. This is a secret far too powerful and dangerous for someone as ambitious for Ashura to ever find out about. With it, he would seek to conquer the world -- or worse."

The glow seeped outwards from Yukito's hands as he carefully touched each rune in turn, until the entire stone ring was sparkling like a field of fireflies. The air in the center of the stone ring was beginning to darken and waver, as though a fire beneath the stone were casting smoke and heated air up through the portal.

"Why are you doing this?" Kurogane had to ask. He didn't know why Yukito was answering so many of his questions, but he had to understand this. "If you told Ashura this was here, he could be sitting in the ruins of Edo in less than a week! Why would you betray your king and your country?"

Yukito turned to face him, and now the color of the light coming from his staff was exactly the same as what reflected from his glasses. "Because I do not believe that what Ashura is doing is right," he said. "I believe in the future, Lord Kurogane; a future for both of our countries, where all of our peoples can live in peace. I've seen it; I know it's possible. The empress and the king may not believe in that future, or care -- but I will do everything in my power to see that that it comes to pass."

The space inside the stone ring was completely dark, now, a cloud which spread to the limits of the stone ring and rippled like stone dropped on a water. A second glow, this one a strange yellow mixed with green, was beginning to fight for ascendancy over the darkness in the center of the portal. A breeze was beginning to pass rapidly through the chamber, air rushing from the stone stairs behind them and being sucked into the portal.

"Why do you care what happens to Nihon?" Kurogane said. He had to shout to make himself heard over the growing wind; it whipped his hair into his eyes and tugged at his clothing, as though trying to pull him in.

"Because someone very important to me lives there," Yukito answered. His hair and robes were being whipped around him by the breeze, lending a peculiarly wild look to the usually mild-tempered man. "Good-bye, Lord Suwa. You'll be met on the other side by someone who will help you, someone I trust from the bottom of my heart. And you will have others waiting to welcome you home, ones as dear to you as he is to me."

It was strange, how Yukito didn't seem to raise his voice at all, but it still carried perfectly through the noise. The wind was rising to gale force, and despite all his doubts Kurogane felt himself stumbling inexorably towards the portal.

"After that," Yukito's voice echoed in his ears, "It will be all up to you."

He stepped into the darkness, but all he saw was light.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you were wondering why Ashura would consent to duel with Kurogane: remember, he never does anything without an ulterior motive. In this case, he's anticipating going up in armed combat with other soldiers of Nihon, possibly even the Empress herself. He's using Kurogane as a guinea pig to learn about the Nihon style of martial combat, and develop counter-strategies for it. Of course, he doesn't tell Kurogane any of this, and Kurogane hasn't figured it out on his own. Please don't tell him, it would just break his heart.


	14. Dreams and Nightmares

Between one step and the next the level of the ground changed, and Kurogane stumbled and nearly fell. His vision was swimming with cloudy black and green highlights, and for a long moment he could not determine if the room was too bright or too dark for him to see. He bent over slightly and planted his hands on his knees, taking a deep breath and swallowing hard against a violent surge of nausea.

At last he was able to take a deep breath and look up, blinking repeatedly as his vision finally began to clear. He was in a dusty, empty room he didn't recognize -- packed-earth walls all around him, except for the wall behind him, which was stone. A little bit of sunlight streamed in from the doorway opposite, enough to illuminate the silhouette of a man standing there.

Kurogane straightened up, breath catching in alarm, before Yukito's last words caught up with him -- _Someone will be waiting for you on the other side._ Why would there be an agent of Ceres in Shirasagi Castle? "Who's there?" he called out suspiciously.

The shadowed figure moved, arms unfolding as it pushed away from the doorframe, and the dim filtered light fell on the features of Crown Prince Touya. "Welcome back, Demon-Queller," he said in a calm voice.

"Highness!" Kurogane was startled, and his mind reeled. He took another step forward, and stumbled -- apparently he wasn't quite as over the vertigo as he'd thought.

Touya came forward and grabbed Kurogane's arm as he wobbled. "Easy," he said. "Come on, let's get you somewhere out of sight. And out of those clothes. Ceres court garb isn't exactly inconspicuous around here, you know."

He pulled Kurogane to the door, and after a quick glance around outside it, outside. The glare of even weak winter sun was hard to adjust to after being shut indoors so long, and Kurogane could not at first get his bearings. "I didn't exactly have much of a choice," he said, although he kept his voice down. "Prince Touya -- what's going on? How did you come to be here?"

Touya stopped abruptly, and turned to look Kurogane full in the face. He wasn't as tall as Kurogane -- of course, very few men of Nihon were -- but he had a serious, penetrating look on his face that made Kurogane feel at least a foot shorter. "How much do you remember?" he demanded.

"How much do I remember? I..." Kurogane paused, at a loss. "I was in my room, and someone came to see me... and then I... don't know. I was underground, and there was this incredible ring made of stone... but I'm not quite sure how I got there --"

"He did it, then. Good," Touya nodded satisfaction, and exerted pressure on Kurogane's arm until he started moving again. "Yukito hates altering people's memories against their will, but in this case it was necessary. My sisters will be _very_ curious to know how you came to escape, and I have no intention of exposing him for your sake."

"Memories? What are you talking about?" Kurogane asked, angrily shrugging Touya's hand off his arm; but the Prince just scowled at him and beckoned him along, and he had no choice but to follow.

At last they came to a small room with a sliding-paper door. Touya went outside to speak quietly with a servant in the hall, and then came back in. "We'll find you a change of clothes," the Prince told him in a brisk tone, "and then sneak you off the castle grounds. There should be a place in the castle city where you can stay the night, and then 'return' to the castle in the morning."

"Whatever," Kurogane said. "Now what's going on here? How do you know Yukito, and what did you mean when you talked about my memories?"

"As for the second question, it's very simple," Touya said, folding his arms as he leaned back against the wooden doorframe to wait, almost the same posture he'd had when Kurogane had emerged from the portal. "I had Yukito put a block on your memories of today. By tomorrow morning you'll be back to normal, but you won't remember anything from today."

"Why?" Kurogane demanded.

"Why do you think? So that you couldn't tell anyone about the portal between Shirasagi and Ruval -- or about me and Yukito," Touya said. "You're a very loyal retainer, Kurogane of Suwa, but I don't think you quite have the mentality to grasp what Yukito and I are trying to do here --"

Kurogane found that rather insulting, but since this was his crown prince, he let it pass.

" -- and even if you swore to silence, the first time my sister touched your mind, she would know. You couldn't hide your thoughts from her, even if you tried." He shrugged casually, as thought that were the end of it.

A chill crossed Kurogane, and a half-remembered voice: _What Fai knows, Ashura soon knows. He can't hide his thoughts from him, even if he tries._ He shrugged it away uneasily -- his relationship with Tomoyo wasn't like that at all. Was it?

"Fine," Kurogane said aloud. "You don't want the Empress to know about that thing, and the other guy didn't want Ashura to know about it either. That makes sense, I guess. But that doesn't explain _you_. How do you know the second senior wizard of Ceres, and why are you working with him?"

Touya shrugged again and turned to stare out the crack of the door, his expression bored and uninterested. For the first time, Kurogane had to wonder how much of the prince's careless, indolent manner was genuine.

"Well, why not?" he said softly, and then turned back to regard Kurogane. "It's a long story. You might as well make yourself comfortable, since we're waiting for the cover of darkness anyway."

Kurogane nodded shortly, and settled on the rush floor. Touya began.

"I was always a Prince, as you know," he said, "but I wasn't always the heir. Before Amaterasu ascended the throne I lived in an estate out in the country. I was only a bastard son of the Imperial line, so no one ever expected me to amount to much; and although they spoiled me well enough, they weren't as strict about keeping me isolated from the outside world as they might have been had I been a full heir."

Kurogane nodded again; he was familiar with the somewhat convoluted blood politics of the imperial family. Kendappa's unexpected rise to the throne had overturned a lot of comfortable assumptions.

Touya continued. "When I was a little boy, I was sometimes able to get away from my nurses and slip out to explore. One day in the ditch behind the manor walls, I met another boy -- the strangest little boy I'd ever seen. His skin and hair were completely white, and his eyes were the most curious yellow color."

Kurogane drew in his breath in startled recognition, and Touya gave him a sardonic half-smile. "Oh, yes. Yukito was born a peasant in Nihon, didn't you know? Of course, the town we were in was rustic and ignorant, and they didn't think much of someone so abnormal. I, on the other hand, was fascinated; I'd never met anyone like him before.

"After that I made a point of slipping away more often, and the pale boy and I became the best of friends. He didn't have anywhere to live... or anyone to take care of him. I'd sneak food out of the castle to him, and we'd play. We were very close, especially after I discovered that he and I could play a game that nobody else could -- a game of talking without moving our mouths."

"But that's impossible," Kurogane exclaimed. "That's -- you'd have to be..."

"The word you're looking for is 'mage,' I believe." That sardonic smile curled up further. "Why are you so shocked, Kurogane? These powers run strong in my family. My mother had them. My sister has them. Is it so hard to believe that I have them, as well? If the prejudice against male magic-users weren't so strong in this country, people would have figured it out years ago."

Kurogane shook his head in disbelief. Touya shrugged like Kurogane's acceptance or not did not matter to him; and went on.

"One day, I slipped away to meet Yukito... but he wasn't there," Touya said, with a trace of an old sadness in his voice. "I didn't know what had happened. There was no one that I could ask. When I mentioned him to my nurse, she nearly had a fit; she'd only say that he was an evil witch-boy, and I wasn't to speak of such things.

"Years went by, and my quiet country life was thrown into total chaos when my sister gained the throne. I came to Edo and I put Yukito out of my mind, though I never truly forgot him -- not until the day when I heard his voice in my mind again, like the games we used to play when we were children. Except now, he was speaking to me from far-off Ceres. He told me about how King Ashura had come to save him, and taken him away to the palace in Ceres -- and about the other wizards who were gathered there."

A sudden terrible doubt shook Kurogane -- all of the wizards of Ceres that he'd met were male, but there were no male wizards in Nihon. Did this mean that Touya was allied with them because of his powers, thinking them a brotherhood who would accept him more readily than his home country?

He didn't voice his sudden suspicions, although by the flicker of anger and hurt that passed over Touya's face, hidden almost too soon to identify, he wondered if he had to. "It doesn't matter," the prince said. "I'm not going to let you go running off to report this conversation to my sister -- if you could even remember what you wanted to tell her by the time you got there. Always the loyal retainer, Kurogane of Suwa."

"My loyalty is sworn to Tomoyo," Kurogane reminded him angrily, "and through her to the country of Nihon -- not to Amaterasu. But what about you, _Prince_ Touya? What country do _you_ serve?"

When Touya spoke again, his voice was low, but determined. "I serve the future," he said. "My sister is ambitious, and bloodthirsty, and cunning -- but that doesn't make her _right_. Are the whims of the emperor always for the best for the country? I _am_ the heir to the throne; if I were to become emperor tomorrow, then suddenly my word would become law, and all that had come before would be a mistake. But would right and wrong be any different than they are today?

"I have never betrayed my country, Kurogane," Touya said, "and I never will. But I believe in the future. A future where my country's greatness isn't built on the slaughter and suffering of others. I believe that Amaterasu will lead our country to ruin, and I oppose everything she stands for -- but I have no taste for regicide, to put myself on the throne in her place. So I wait, and I watch, and I do what I can behind the scenes to set the stage for the day when peace comes to our people."

Kurogane nodded slowly, digesting this. It sounded familiar somehow, but he had no intention of getting in between the power squabbles of the royal siblings. "All right," he said finally. "I accept what you say."

"So glad you approve," Touya said, sounding in an instant so much like King Ashura that it made Kurogane's blood run cold. But then there was a light rap on the wooden frame of the doorway, and Touya turned away from him; he opened it a crack, enough to exchange an item and a few terse words with a servant, and then closed it again.

He turned back with a pile of black fabric in his arms, and shook it out onto the floor. "All right," he said, "get changed, and I'll get rid of the Ceres clothes. After that we'll get you off the palace grounds, and you can sleep off the effects of the spell. I'll have a servant bring food to you as well."

"Thank you, Your Highness," Kurogane said and reached for the clothes, suddenly eager to be back in normal garments and not in these too-short ridiculous garments any more. Food sounded good, almost as good as sleep; and as for the rest of what Touya had said, it could wait until after those two things had been taken care of.

He had no idea what spell Touya was talking about, anyway.

\----------------

Kurogane nearly groaned in relief as he stepped over the threshhold to his home, and sat to remove his boots. If there was one good thing about his involuntary stay in Ceres, it had taught him to truly appreciate the comforts of civilization -- edible food, clean floors, and most of all regular _baths._ Bathing in Ceres, as far as he could tell, consisted of washing one's body as best as possible in a shallow basin before pouring the -- already dirty! -- water over yourself to rinse. Added to the time he'd spent on patrol, and he hadn't had a real bath in nearly two months -- and bathing in the cold mountain pond, against his own will, did _not_ count.

He'd spent the entire day closeted with Tomoyo over one thing or another. First in reuinion, the emotional tone of which had warmed him almost as much as it embarrassed him (and why the hell had they thought he was dead, anyway? He'd been missing for much longer periods of time than that before.) Second in reporting, as he'd done his best to summarize the sequence of events that had led him first to Ceres, and then out again -- and finally with Tomoyo exerting all her powers to try and lift the strange block on his memory, that he could recall _how_ he'd escaped in the first place.

Ultimately she'd failed, and while he was profoundly unnerved to have such an important piece of his reality missing, he was at least comforted by her reassurances that there were no other spells or compulsions of any kind on him; whoever had sent him back here, hadn't done so with the intent of making him some sort of spy or deep-cover mole.

Lost in his thoughts, he did not at first notice the diffident knock on the wooden frame of the door; back in his home base and with his defenses down, he didn't even register the shadow of the person at the doorway until it turned and moved away. Growling under his breath, Kurogane jerked the door open again, wondering who had such a death wish as to disturb him now, when he'd _just_ gotten home.

The knocker had already left his doorway; he saw their retreating back down the street, dressed in the clothes of one of the palace servants. What could they have wanted, and why would they not stay to talk to him directly? Then he noticed the folded parchment note that had appeared on the doorstep, and picked it up with a frown, bringing it back inside to read by the light of the lanterns.

The note was unsigned, and he did not recognize the handwriting; it was written all in kana, which made it difficult to identify the hand of origin. Although it looked vaguely familiar, he could not place it; the only thing of which he was certain was that it had been written neither by Kyle Rondart, the court scribe, nor by Tomoyo, whose elegant script he knew by heart.

The message it contained was short and obscure. _My friend wishes you to know that your mutual friend is in disgrace. He still retains his marking and is much reduced by it. The august personage cannot find evidence to link him to your disappearance but blames him for it nonetheless._

Kurogane stared at the note.

No names were named, but the only way this message could make sense was if the 'mutual friend' referred to Fai. Who had written it? How could they possibly be in contact with someone from the palace at Ceres? He was seized with an urge to chase down the anonymous servant and demand to know who'd left the note, but he knew it was fruitless.

He sat down rather heavily, and read it again. No matter who had written the note or sent the message, there was only one part of this that mattered.

 _He still retains his marking._ Fai was still under the effects of the _geas_ that restricted his magic. And that meant that he could not possibly participate in whatever terrible thing the wizards of Ceres were planning to unleash upon Nihon. He must know of it, might help with it, but it would not actually be done by his hand.

Kurogane drew a deep breath and closed his eyes, pressing the note briefly against his lips. Then he opened his eyes again, tossed the scrap of parchment into the kitchen cook-fire, and went to bed.

  
\----------------

  
Kurogane was dreaming, and as he often did, he dreamed that he was riding -- that he was on patrol. He was pushing through a thicket in search of an elusive trail, and twigs and leaves kept catching on his limbs. He worried about them tearing holes in his clothes, but then he realized he wasn't wearing his armor; in fact, he wasn't wearing anything at all.

The branches opened up suddenly into a clearing, and in the middle of the clearing was a broad shining pool. Fai was standing thigh-deep in the middle of the pool, completely naked, his white skin glowing. When he turned around and looked at Kurogane, his eyes seemed to be glowing too; the blue color seemed to have spread all through his eyes, even the whites and pupils.

The black markings that Kurogane remembered so vividly still covered Fai's skin, twining over his back and his arms and neck, but this time they were different. Instead of an abstract design, they shifted and changed even as he watched to form words, _kanji_ he was sure he ought to be able to read, but couldn't quite grasp the meaning of them. "They're magical," Fai said, smiling at him invitingly. "Just like me."

He was off his horse, somehow, and standing at the edge of the water. Fai opened his arms wide, and drew him forward into the pool; the water lapped at his thighs, strangely warm against his skin. "Touch them," Fai urged him, as the patterns of ink shifted and danced over his skin, forming new words and meanings every second. "Don't you want to know what they feel like?"

Kurogane did. He reached out one hand and Fai was in his arms, and the shockingly electric tingle of his skin was like nothing Kurogane had ever felt before. He clutched the other man to him, at once cold and searingly hot against Kurogane's body, and a taste like wildfire filled Kurogane's mouth.

  
\----------------

  
He woke in his own bed, in his own room, with the sheets tangled around his body and his light cotton robe soaked with sweat. He stared at his plain, familiar ceiling and cursed his traitorous dreams; there was no avoiding the fact that he was hard now, and was going to have a miserable time of it this morning unless he could take care of this.

His memories of the past few days were a confused jumble; the day before yesterday was a complete blank, a distressing hole in his world, but the tumultuous events of yesterday morning -- when he'd stumbled in a daze back into the castle to the excited shouts of a court that had pronounced him dead -- were hardly much better. Things were disturbed enough in his life right now without his dreams betraying him too.

He swore aloud, his voice more weary than angry, and managed to push himself out of his futon to stumble towards the outdoor bath. Thank all the Gods for little mercies, that his student wasn't around to see him like this.

  
\----------------

  
The next day he was summoned before the council of generals, to debrief him of his time spent in Ceres and what he had learned from observing there. He'd already told most of it to Tomoyo the day before -- at least, the parts of it he could remember -- but the questions of the Empress and her generals had different priorities.

"To put it bluntly, they have no men," he replied to the latest of a barrage of questions. "The force that escorted the king back from the pass to the palace was no more than a token force, a kingsguard -- a few hundred men at most. I don't know if there were reserve troops stationed elsewhere, but I didn't see them, nor any place that they could be hidden. I can't report numbers on something that wasn't there."

One of the generals leaned forward intently. "What about the wizards?" he said. "We heard he had a whole army of them up there. Can you tell us more about them?"

"I wouldn't call it an army by any stretch," Kurogane said drily. "Again, I can only report what I saw -- there might have been others stationed outside of the palace, or who were kept hidden from me. But I only saw thirteen or fourteen fully adult and capable wizards working for him. He's got a few more that are still underage and in training -- I don't know how much they add to his calculations. Aside from that, I know for a fact that one of the wizards can't leave the palace -- he's tied to it the way a _miko_ is to her shrine -- and another one of them is incapacitated. So he's really only got about ten or twelve."

"Incapacitated? How so?" Touya looked up from his throne with some interest at this. Kurogane shot him a sideways look. His first reaction to the question was surprise that Touya should ask; it seemed somehow like he should already know the answer. But he couldn't think why that might be.

He had to choose his words carefully here. "One of the King's wizards -- the first senior wizard, in fact -- did something that pissed off the King not long ago. As a punishment, the King put some kind of mark on him that hobbles his power. He still had it the last time I saw him a few days ago." He hadn't actually seen the marking during his last disastrous argument with Fai; but if the note was accurate then the geas was still in effect, so technically it wasn't a lie. "He's one of their strongest, so if he's out of the game, then they're missing some of their firepower."

"What did he do that angered his king?" one of the councillors wanted to know.

"Failed a task the king had set him," Kurogane said briefly.

"What task was that?" another one asked intently.

"Trying to kill me," Kurogane replied dryly. "He attacked me in my sleep when I was out in the wilderness, and shattered the wards that Princess Tomoyo had set for me before I fought him off and overpowered him." He sent Tomoyo an apologetic look as he said that, although it hadn't really been his fault; it had been the destruction of those spells that had led her to believe Kurogane was dead, and caused her much grief thereby.

A derisive chuckle went through the assembled councillors. "So this is the pride of Ceres?" one of them said with a sneer. "Their most powerful agent can't even overcome a single sleeping warrior? It is no surprise to find the wizards of the north to be so impotent or incompetent."

Unlike King Ashura, the Nihon generals obviously had no trouble believing that Kurogane had bested Fai by sheer strength at arms, and not that Fai had been restraining his power. It was hot on Kurogane's tongue to reply that this man wouldn't come off so well in a contest of arms against the wizard, and to make jokes about his power and abilities when he was a charred smear on the floor.

Kurogane set his jaw and did not say anything; explaining _why_ Fai had been restraining his power, why he had not wanted to carry out his mission would be too long and difficult a process. Besides, why should he feel the urge to defend Fai's good name and honor among these men? He was an enemy, after all. There was no reason to feel a sting of anger at the man's slighting words as though they'd been directed against himself.

Thinking too long on Fai brought back uneasy echoes of last night's dream, and Kurogane had to fight the urge to squirm in his spot, fought against a faint flush of hot blood that wanted to rise to his face. This was most emphatically _not_ the time or the place to be thinking of this, and yet as hard as he tried, he couldn't seem to stop it; thoughts of the blond mage kept coming to mind at the most inopportune of times.

Why, why could he not get the man out of his head? The argument they'd had before he left Ruval had ensured that whatever had once been between them was finished. Most likely, they'd never see each other again. In fact, he sincerely hoped not; since if they ever did, it would most likely be as enemies on opposite sides of the battlefield.

That was another thought Kurogane tried hard not to spend much time on.

"Were you able to get any ideas about the deployment of their forces?" Kendappa wanted to know, and Kurogane seized gratefully on the distraction.

"No," he said. "They knew who I was, after all, and they were careful to keep me away from areas where preparations were being made."

"But surely you must have at least gotten a glimpse of battle plans," the sneering general chimed in; this one had a whining voice and nagging manner that set Kurogane's nerves on edge. "You were there for weeks, after all! Didn't you get a chance to see any documents or anything?"

"Right, because they would have just left them lying around for me to see," Kurogane snapped back, "and conveniently translated into _Nihongo,_ I suppose? I can't read their damn chicken-scratch language. I'm not a spy, and I wasn't sent there as one." He took a deep breath and got his irritated reactions under control.

"The one thing that I do know was that the day before yesterday, the King of Ceres left the palace at Ruval, and took his most powerful wizards and advisors with him," he said. He paused, struggling to remember the details of that conversation; bits of it kept slipping in and out of consciousness. "I think... I'm almost sure that he was getting ready for something big. A renewal of hostilities at the least, maybe something more."

"There are plenty of reasons why the king might have left the castle, most of them entirely harmless," the nagging General said again. "What makes you so sure that this was something else?"

"Would he have needed to take his most powerful wizard with him on a minor administrative errand?" Kurogane was quick to retort. He had to reach up to rub at a flaring pain in his forehead; struggling to think around the hole in his memory. "Look, you brought me in here to tell you what I know about what's happening in Ceres," he said. "And I'm telling you, they're planning something major -- probably within the next few days. You need to be ready."

"And what would this 'something' be?" Kendappa pressed him. "Can you provide any kind of clue what we're supposed to be preparing for?"

Helplessly, Kurogane shook his head.

Kendappa shrugged, sitting back in her throne with a languid pose. "The army is already encamped in defensive fortifications; they are prepared for any attack. All we need is for them to venture out beyond the safety of their hidey-hole, and we'll have them. Whatever they have to throw at us, we'll throw it back in their teeth and be done with this war once and for all. You are dismissed, Kurogane."

Somehow, Kurogane doubted that, but he could hardly say so aloud. He bowed his head in respect, and withdrew.

  
\----------------

This time, Kurogane was waiting for the quiet rap at the door, and he jumped up and yanked it open almost as soon as it came. Once again, however, the figure of the messenger disappeared from sight just as the door opened, and once again Kurogane forbore to chase him down.

The note was the important thing. A quick glance confirmed that his student was not in the common room, so Kurogane took it and unfolded it.

Once again it was short and obscure, and once again Kurogane felt the nagging sense of familiarity about the handwriting.

 _My friend wishes you to know that your mutual friend has been sent away on an errand. The august personage has sent him as envoy to seek alliance with a certain party who may be OUR mutual enemy._

Kurogane read the note with a sinking heart. Although cryptically phrased, the message it contained was ominous. Fai sent as an envoy? King Ashura was seeking an alliance? Nihon had many enemies, but most of them were too distant from Ceres to be considered as an ally, and had little interest in that cold and tiny country. The emphasis on 'our enemy' was a little confusing, but it hinted that both the author of the note and his Ceres accomplice were likely to regard this 'certain party' as dangerous... or evil.

Surely... Surely Ashura would not be mad enough to seek an alliance with the 'dark power' that controlled the demons from the west? The demons were the enemy of 'all' human life, not just one country. They were monsters; they weren't humans to be bargained or reasoned with. Any mind controlling them would be just as dangerous, unpredictable, and gleefully cruel. Even Ashura would not...

Kurogane thought about Ceres' cold and dangerous king; his quick, flexible mind, always looking for a way to wring every advantage out of a new situation. He thought about his ruthless, immovable determination, his towering ambition and arrogance, and his cold indifference to the lives of even the people he claimed to love. Yes, Ashura would. Only Ashura would.

And he'd sent Fai as his emissary.

Kurogane crumpled the note in one hand, tossed it in the fire, and turned towards bed. He tossed and turned for hours, this time, before sleep overtook him.

\----------------

  
Night.

Dreams.

Tomoyo dreamed, and knew it to be a true dream, as she drifted through the monochrome avenues of a sleeping town. Fires burned low through narrow windows and doorways, warding against a chill that Tomoyo could not feel. No citizens were abroad on so bitter a night, but armed and armored groups of men patrolled regularly through the streets, and atop the towers and parapets that lined the great wall. The stones of the wall glowed faintly to Tomoyo's sight, faint trails of light leading towards the great jinja near the center of town.

This was Esui, a garrisoned town against the northern border, reinforced by tons of stone and wooden bracing, filled with guards and soldiers waiting for the call that would come; either to come out from behind the wards to join the attack or, if need be, to fall back and defend the walls from an assault. Tomoyo drifted among them, silent as a ghost.

A shadow passed over the streets as a cloud blocked out the moon; and yet, no breezes stirred the bare twigs of the trees. Tomoyo looked up, and beheld a cloud that drifted silently above the walls. There was something odd about this cloud, a faint luminescence that did not come either from the moonlight above or the firelight below; an odd shimmer that alternated between a sickly green and purple, like the terrible light that came before a great storm.

And then it began to rain.

It was a gentle rain at first, barely a drizzle of water, but the raindrops spattered oddly as they hit the pavement, not quite like real water. Where the rain fell a strange mist began to rise, out of the gutters and the drains, creeping into the alleyways and streets, a sickly blue-green mist that crept low around the ground and billowed upwards like a fog. The small creatures that lived in the streets were the first to be enveloped by the mist, and as it overcame them, they began to gasp and choke.

The mist billowed through the streets, creeping through alleyways and into shops, seeking doorways and windows into the houses where people slept. Before Tomoyo's horrified eyes babies in their cradles fell still and silent; sleeping children coughed fitfully in their beds, not even waking as sleep turned to death. Tools and dishes fell from suddenly nerveless hands as those men and women still awake breathed the strange blue mist and were overcome by it; in more than one house an unattended candle or lantern clattered from its place and spilled fire onto the rushes of the floor.

The rain fell harder, and Tomoyo could see it now, the shimmering matrix of magic that had formed this unnatural, unholy cloud, that directed and controlled it. Their joined wills searched through the dying town, pushing the cloud and its deadly rain this way and that, until it finally found the target it sought. The shrine was mostly empty this time of night, with the attendants and servants asleep in their beds; the only ones still awake were the night shift guards, whose weapons slipped from nerveless hands as they tumbled over, choking and clawing at their own throats for air. There was no chance to raise any alarm, for to take a breath to shout a warning was to die.

And the shrine's priestess, who had sat up in a late vigil that night in the innermost sanctuary, meditating on the spells entwined with the stones of the walls. _Tohru!_ Tomoyo cried out, extending her mind's voice towards the doomed priestess. _Shiro Tohru, beware! Defend thyself!_

But it was too late. Even as the dark-haired woman gasped and started up, whirling around to face the innermost door of the chamber, the blue smoke began to writhe its way around the cracks, seeping in to fill the room. "Warn the others!" Tohru cried out, beginning to cough and gag already as the subtle poison invaded the room, robbing the air of its virtue. "Tsukuyomi -- please --"

Then the steady presence of her mind was gone.

The stars faltered in their dance.

The light of the wards faltered, dimmed and flickered, confusion overtaking them with the loss of the steadying mind of their priestess.

And a violent explosion rocked the north wall of the city, unheard and unheeded by the still, silent guardians of Esui. The earth trembled under its force, and the walls of the city swayed as their foundations were rocked. All unmonitored, lamps and cook-fires tumbled from their cradles to land on rushes, fires already starting to spread in the wooden buildings of the city.

The wards shattered, and the walls broke and fell inwards, fragments of burning stone hurled through the air to pepper roofs and streets half a mile away.

Tomoyo came out of her trance crying aloud, her throat aching even as her eyes were blinded with visions of destruction, her mouth and nose filled with the acrid scent of burning stone and that insidious, deadly rain.

 _Tsukuyomi! What is it?_ Souma was near, her presence familiar and steadying, and Tomoyo frantically reached out and seized her hand.

" _Call my sister. Call the army!_ " she said, her 'voice' shaking with shock and grief. " _The northern wards have fallen! Esui is lost!"_

  
\----------------

"Monstrous!" Kendappa fumed, pacing back and forth before her throne in agitation. "They aren't human! What kind of evil creature could do such a vile thing? I will have them destroyed, root and branch! We will wipe their infection clean from the face of the earth!"

At least she'd stopped hacking at the walls with her sword, but Kurogane really wished she'd sit down. She'd been raving in this vein for hours now without a break, and she was starting to repeat herself.

They were gathered for this conference in one of the smaller receiving rooms; Kendappa, Prince Touya, Princess Tomoyo, Kurogane, and two of her top generals. The supposed purpose of the gathering was to devise a response to the disaster on the north front, but so far no one had been able to get a word in edgewise over the Empress' fury.

"That's enough, Your Majesty," Kurogane said loudly, cutting across Kendappa's rant. "Stop shouting and sit down."

"How can I rest when such an abomination has been loosed on us?" Kendappa raged. "Thousands of men -- women, children -- murdered in a night! I will have this coward King of Ceres' head on a pike! I will have his miserable people decorating trees from here to the northernmost border! They will _not_ be allowed to get away with such an atrocity!"

"Oh, get off your high horse," Kurogane said wearily. Shocked eyes from all over the room turned to stare at him for his presumption, but he kept his glare on Kendappa. "Are we going to talk of murder? How many women and children of Ceres did your army butcher as they climbed the long valley and razed the towns behind them? For that matter, how many people died when you annexed Koryo, eight years ago? Or when you put down the rebellion in the Hanshin province four years before that? Killing is your trade, Empress, so you don't have much room to be outraged when somebody turns out to be better at it than you."

"How _dare_ you?" Kendappa turned her fury on him. "What kind of spineless coward would not avenge such a slight on our people? Or are you after all nothing but a puppet for Ceres -- is that the real reason they sent you back to this court, to poison and corrupt this Court?"

"You've got a lot of nerve calling me a traitor," Kurogane growled. "I warned you three days ago that Ceres was planning something -- you didn't listen. I'm not to be blamed for your incompetence."

"You dare speak so to your divine king?" Kendappa was red-faced from exertion and shouting. "I should put our your tongue for the filth you've spouted!"

"So you want to fight me?" It was a stupid idea, and Kurogane knew it, but all the frustration and fury and exasperation goaded him onwards. In defiance of all custom, Kurogane climbed to his feet and set his stance, meeting the Empress' fury head-on. "Whether you like me or not, you know I'm the best swordsman you have. I went up against King Ashura and was overwhelmingly defeated. Would you care to duel me now, Your Majesty? If you beat me, then perhaps you'll have a chance against _him_ in single combat. I wouldn't put money on it, though."

Prince Touya covered his mouth for a cough that sounded suspiciously like laughter. Kendappa stared at him, white-lipped with fury. "I will not be spoken to so by cowards and traitors!" she spat, and raised her chin. "Guards, attend me!"

 _"Enough!"_

The sudden word rolled through the room like a clap of thunder, cutting through the sudden melee of shouting; it was impossible to block out, because it came not through the ears but through the mind. Tomoyo had stood from her throne; Kurogane saw those closest to her clutching their heads, and would have felt sorry for them if the ringing in his ears would only stop long enough for him to focus. Prince Touya, oddly enough, alone in the room looked unflustered by the mental explosion.

He'd only heard Tomoyo raise her 'voice' once before, and never to so many people. Her anger cracked through their midst like a whip. _"This is no time to bicker and seek scapegoats amongst ourselves!"_

The thunder died away, and Tomoyo seated herself again, ashen and trembling but with a grim expression. She held out her hand commandingly, and the ninja Souma obediently took it, although her expression was still dazed and bewildered.

After a moment she cleared her throat, and raised her voice to the assembled chamber on Tomoyo's behalf.

"The wards have fallen," she said, "and that is _our_ charge, to guard and maintain the boundaries between this world and the next. This failure therefore falls upon _our_ head, and we must take steps to rectify it.

"Our brave soldiers of Nihon are even now struggling to hold back the tide of invasion; but they cannot hold for long against an assault of wizardry. Only magic can be used to counter magic; we must, we must shield our soldiers and find a way to counter their spells. At the same time, we cannot be sure that another such deadly assault will not occur in a different location along the northern border."

The vision of two such breaches in their defenses danced before all of their eyes; one of the councillors let out a groan at the thought.

Souma continued, her voice slightly stumbling and uncertain. "We have been called to arms, and we will answer. I will summon all of the _miko_ from the internal provinces and any -- any that can be spared from the other walls to join hands with those remaining on the north border, to, to, reinforce their wards and defend against the assault of wizardry. Furthermore, all those of the elite demon hunters who are not currently turned to other tasks --"

 _"What?"_ Kurogane was on his feet again before he knew it, the full-throated roar that had escaped him echoing from the wooden rafters. "Tsukuyomi, no! You can't!"

Other voices were shouting at him, and hands grabbed at him roughly to try to force him to kneel, but he shrugged them off stepped towards Tomoyo, ignoring the others to address her directly. "Have you lost your senses?" he demanded of her. "You know why we can't do that! The moment the demons sense weakness, they'll be all over us, and there will be no soldiers left inside the borders to defend against them?"

Tomoyo met his eyes calmly, and her expression was resolute. Her hand tightened minutely on Souma's, who lifted her chin and replied to him, "It is as it must be, Kurogane. All your shouting will avail you nothing. The demons are shadowed to my sight, and I cannot tell what they _may_ do; but I know that our kingdom _will_ fall if we cannot stop the advance of the king of Ceres and his wizards. There is no other way."

For a moment Kurogane stood there, torn between two impossible demands, filled with frustration and helpless anger. This was a mistake, he _knew_ it was; but there was nothing he could say or do to change things.

This time he didn't wait to be dismissed; he wheeled around and stormed out of the conference chamber.

  
\----------------

  
There was another plain folded note on his doorstep when he returned to the house, days later. Kurogane approached it with a mix of anticipation and wariness.

This one contained only a few short lines. _My friend wishes you to know that your mutual friend has not been heard from in over a week._

Kurogane went to bed that night dreading his dreams.

\----------------

  
That night, Kurogane dreamed of Suwa, on the night that Suwa had been destroyed. Clouds of smoke boiled up, so black and choking that they turned day into night, and huge shadows that drifted against the soot-blackened sky, black against red. He stood in the doorway of his burning home, sword in hand, and the street was ankle-deep in blood.

It was a nightmare he'd had before, many times. Less so since his skill at hunting demons had grown into adulthood. More so since meeting Fai. But this time, there was a new element.

Fai was walking down the street of doomed Suwa, dressed in the formal regalia of the wizards of Ceres. Although the rest of the world was shadowed and dark, sooty and dull, Fai was as clear and brightly lit as a beacon. His fair skin and hair glowed like a spotlight was on him, and the white-and-silver decorations on his clothes glittered madly.

As Fai walked, the flames roared out to either side of him, fanning outwards from the center of the maelstrom. Everywhere he stepped, shadows gathered in his footprints; further back along the path they were struggling to rise, growing into the monstrous form of the oni who flocked in his path.

Fai turned to look at him, and his eyes were a solid black, reflecting the glittering fires like a mirror. "I can do more," he whispered, and his voice was seductive, malicious. "Would you like to see?"

Kurogane raised his sword, feeling slow and clumsy, and held it between them; but far from avoiding it, Fai simply spread his arms and walked straight onto the blade. As it emerged from his back, the steel was coated with a black viscous fluid that hissed and steamed, but Fai only smiled and walked forward, impaling himself further on the sword. A breathtaking thrill gripped Kurogane's body, watching the gleaming length of steel disappear into Fai's torso. Fai raised his lips to Kurogane's, and filled his mouth with the iron tang of blood.

Fai's arms went around Kurogane, and the flames roared in to engulf them.

  
\----------------

Kurogane sat bolt upright with a gasp, still half-seeing the orange light of the flames surrounding him, still half-choking on remembered smoke.

He was hard again.

Kurogane whispered a curse, shut his eyes, and let his head fall back against the wooden beams of the wall with a painful thud. He was going mad.

  
\----------------

He hadn't been called to the council today; hadn't been called by them in over a week, in fact. But he went to the castle anyway, striding forward with such purpose and determination that he was almost to the receiving chambers before anyone worked up the nerve to stop him. This morning, he'd chosen to don the formal court uniform of the demon-hunting corps, along with the silver sash that proclaimed his rank among them. He didn't usually like to do that; he found the uniform rather silly, since his black plate armor and his twin swords proclaimed exactly what he was anyway and had the advantage of being useful, but today he had a particular reason.

"I want to see the Tsukuyomi," he brusquely told the clerk who stood in his way, who was shooting nervous looks between him and the guards flanking the chamber doorway.

"She is in council with the Divine Empress," the clerk told him stiffly.

"Good. I want to see her too," Kurogane said.

The clerk sniffed and eyed him up and down, eyes lingering on his badge of rank. "Forgive me, Lord Demon-Queller, but you were *not* summoned to the conference today, and certainly not in this capacity."

"No. But I think she'll see me anyway," Kurogane said, and just to make his point, he pulled Souhi from his belt and set her to his side, and settled down into a _seiza_ position in front of the doors. As the clerk sputtered, obviously unsure how to respond, he added, "I'll wait."

Sure enough, barely half an hour later the door opened and Kurogane was called in. He handed over his swords to the guards outside with barely a twinge today; he had too much else on his mind.

With the crown prince and the generals already gone to the front, the council chamber was mostly bare; only Tomoyo and Kendappa and their bodyguards, along with a few ministers and Rondart the court scribe, were there. The Empress greeted his arrival with an icy frown.

"Your Imperial Majesty," Kurogane said formally, and bowed deeply, pressing his forehead to the ground in the ritual gesture before he sat up and sat back on his heels. "Your Highness. Thank you for receiving me."

"It wasn't exactly my idea," Kendappa said coldly, and glared at Tomoyo, who looked impassively back. "I had absolutely no desire to see your face again so soon. Why have you imposed on our time and attention?"

"Your Majesty, I'm not doing any good to anyone rusting here in the capital," Kurogane began, dropping the formal style of speech in favor of directness. "I want you to send me to war."

Kendappa stared at him in astonishment, which quickly gave in to anger. "Have you gone insane, Demon-Queller? Or is this some pathetic attempt to curry my favor now by pretending you've recanted all your protestations? Now, after all you've said, you wish to be trusted with a position in the front lines against Ceres?"

"I haven't changed my mind or lost it," Kurogane said, although he privately wondered about that, given the madness that tormented his dreams lately. "I'm not talking about the war with Ceres."

"What are you talking about, then?" Kendappa demanded with exasperation.

Kurogane took a deep breath. "You've made it clear that you don't want to send me north to fight Ceres," he said. "That's fine, since I've got absolutely no desire to go, as I've told you a thousand times since long before this whole mess began. But we've got another war on, Amaterasu, one that doesn't slow down or stop just because you aren't paying attention to it any more."

Tomoyo glanced over at Souma, who was attending her, and placed her hand in the other women's. Souma cleared her throat and spoke diffidently. "You are speaking of the demons, Kurogane?"

"Yes," Kurogane said.

The look on Kendappa's face was an odd kind of amused fury. "Demons!" she exclaimed. "At a time like this? Truly you _are_ obsessed, Kurogane, as well as mad. The enemy is breaking down our door on the north front, and you want to go patrol the woods and hunt demons?"

"No," Kurogane said coldly, anger slipping into his voice despite his private resolve that he was going to behave during this audience. "Not a patrol this time. I want leave to go through the passes in the range to the west. I want to seek out our true enemy, the unknown force who controls the demons and sets him against us."

There was a collective stunned silence. Even the court scribe paused in his industrious writing to stare at Kurogane in astonishment; the light glinted sharply off his glasses as he bent hastily back to his parchment.

Tomoyo nodded slightly, and Souma spoke. "He is right, my sister," she said, as Tomoyo glanced over towards Kendappa. "We cannot afford to face both Ceres and the dark power. If they unite against us, we will surely fall. If there is anything he can do to stave off that dark day, we can not afford to refuse it."

Kendappa glared at Kurogane then shifted on her seat to glance over at Tomoyo. She vented a huff of exasperation. "Very well," she said in an aggrieved voice. "As unfaithful as you may be when it comes to Ceres, in the matter of demons you have always been quite reliable. I suppose you'll want an escort as well. Every soldier is needed at the battlefield now, but if you insist on stripping our defenses further..."

"No!" Kurogane said; he had to force his hands to unclench, to speak normally. "I go alone," he said in an almost normal tone.

"What do you hope to accomplish alone?" Kendappa said scornfully. "I don't trust you not to go haring off as soon as you're out of our sight."

"Do you remember the last time we had this conversation?" Kurogane said in a soft voice. "How many soldiers came back from that trip? And you yourself said we have none to spare."

A dangerous silence stretched between them, this one broken by Tomoyo standing from her chair and making a beckoning gesture towards Kurogane. "The Tsukuyomi wishes to speak with Kurogane alone," Souma said obediently, and gave Kurogane a highly dubious look. _What are you up to?_ her eyes asked him, and Kurogane could only give a little shrug.

Kurogane was able to relax a little once he was no longer in the Empress' presence, but an element of tension remained. Tomoyo could be just as dangerous to his quest as Kendappa could, albeit for different reasons.

He looked up as she stepped forward, raising one hand to place it gently on Kurogane's cheek. Her voice whispered in his mind: _"You know that no one, not even a great force of men who have ventured beyond the western passes has ever returned. I would not have you throw your life away on a fruitless errand. What do you hope to accomplish there? Why must you go alone?"_

"I don't know," Kurogane said. "Maybe I can stop the envoy from Ceres on his way to the west, or on his way back. Maybe I can cut off the lines of communications between them or find some other way to sabotage the alliance. Maybe I'll get one shot to end this threat forever. Maybe not. I won't know until I get there. But I have to try, don't you see? And if I go alone, I'm only risking myself."

 _"We cannot spare you either, dear Kurogane,"_ Tomoyo said, her voice full of a gentle reproach born of an aching pain. _"Losing you once was painful enough."_

"I'm sorry," Kurogane said, and looked up to meet her eyes, huge and dark in her solemn face. "But I think you're strong enough for it."

Her face grew clouded, uncertain; there were no words, but Kurogane heard a faint rushing undertone of conflicting thoughts and emotions. "Trust me," he urged her.

She sighed; her expression smoothed into resolve. _"Very well,"_ she said, straightening up. _"Then you will take my blessing with you, as you go, my champion."_

She raised her small white hands above his crown, and Kurogane bent his head as a white light began to glow between her fingers. He'd seen it before, but he never failed to be touched by awe as the breathless, whispered words of the blessing cascaded through his mind, the warm buzzing sensation that filled his very bones as the light brightened with the force of Tomoyo's power.

But he had no illusions; no matter how bright Tomoyo's light, the shadow into which he was going to carry it was darker still.

  
\----------------

"Let me come with you."

Kurogane paused in the middle of packing his saddlebags, and turned to face the unexpected demand. Syaoran was standing in the doorway of his room, his face set and determined, his chin raised stubbornly. "Say what?" he said.

"You know this is incredibly dangerous," Syaoran said with a pleading tone. "You shouldn't go off and face it by yourself. You should at least have one person there to watch your back."

"Kid, if I didn't think you were ready to go on normal demon patrol with me yet, why in hell would I think you're ready to go fight a nest of them?"

"Ready or not, you need to have _someone,_ " Syaoran argued stubbornly, and Kurogane sighed.

"Look," he said quietly. "It may well be that there's no coming back from this trip. If it's going to be like that, then I could take half the army with me and it wouldn't help. Or maybe it won't be that bad, and I won't even need the help. Either way I'll be easier in my mind knowing I just have myself to worry about, and not bringing risk to everyone else."

"But -- " Syaoran tried to argue.

"Besides," Kurogane cut him off with a certain callousness, "you'd only slow me down and get in my way. That's trouble I don't need."

Syaoran flinched and bowed his head, but he stopped arguing, as Kurogane knew he would. Briefly, since this might be the last time he saw the boy, he considered telling him what he'd learned from Fai about the boy's father, but at the last moment he decided against it. He really had no idea how Syaoran would react, and the last thing he needed now was to get so inflamed that he went off and did something rash.

So instead he closed the leather covering on the pack saddle, and set it aside. "Just stay here and watch the house," he ordered the boy gruffly. "You'll do me more good that way by easing my mind."

"I can't do that," Syaoran said quietly. "I'm sorry."

Kurogane turned to stare at him. "What do you mean, you can't do that?"

"I mean that as soon as you leave, I'm going to be going down to the city and joining the army that's marching for the northern border," Syaoran said.

Kurogane opened his mouth, but managed to force back the first angry retort that wanted to come out of it. After several long moments he managed to say instead, "Don't recall that I gave you leave to do that."

"You didn't need to," Syaoran said, and he raised his head to look Kurogane in the eye with a steady determination. "They're so desperate for recruits now that they'll take anything that's upright and breathing. You need a master's permission to stay, not to leave with them. And no matter what you say, come tomorrow morning, I'm going to be going north with them. Sorry, Sensei, but you can't stop me."

"No," Kurogane said finally, struggling to keep his tone even. Part of him cried out in protest at the thought of Syaoran walking open-eyed into the holocaust that was going on in the north right now, demanded that he stop the boy and protect him; but it was an irrational part, and he knew it. "No, I can't. I'm not your father, and I'm not your owner. You're a free person, as you always have been, and if going north is what you want to do then I can't exactly knock you over the head and tie you up to keep you from going. There's just one thing I need to know. Is this still about revenge for you? Fueling your grievance for what happened to your father two years ago?"

"Actually, no," Syaoran said, and Kurogane could hear the iron resolve in his voice. "It's not about that, or at least not just that, not any more. I may not have been born here but I love this country, Sensei; it's my home. I can't just stand idly by while someone tries to destroy it, not any more than you could. If I have to lay down my life to protect the people who live here, then that's what I'm ready to do."

Kurogane turned away wordlessly, and picked up another pack saddle, looking around for something to fill it with. Behind him, he heard Syaoran shifting nervously from foot to foot in the doorway. "Sensei?" he ventured after a while.

"Just try to remember what I taught you," Kurogane said abruptly. "And I don't just mean swordsmanship. I want you to remember the other things I told you as well, about not letting your feelings control you."

Syaoran let out a long, relieved breath. "I will, Sensei," he promised, his voice unsteady with emotion. "I'll try to make you proud."

The answer to that was so obvious that Kurogane didn't bother to say it, but continued methodically with his journey preparations. He'd be up later than he thought tonight, if he was going to get the kid's belongings travel ready in time as well.

  
\----------------

He left the city of Edo on a borrowed horse the next day, heading west. To his right, black columns of smoke were endlessly rising, spreading across the winter sky.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For all that Tomoyo is supposed to be a dreamseer in this 'verse, she actually doesn't get to see much of the future, does she? All her visions so far have been concurrent. Um, maybe it would be more accurate to call her "clairvoyant" than "precognitive."


	15. The Master of Demons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kurogane is overcome by the Master of Demons, and meets Fai again in a capacity he did not expect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings:   
> This chapter contains graphic violent imagery, including a depiction of vivisection. If you are easily disturbed by things of that nature, you may want to skip this chapter entirely. Please read responsibly!

He lit no fires at night, and had braced himself to endure the winter cold. Surprisingly, the weather grew warmer as he traveled west, whether in some late-season warm snap or changing climate he could not tell. A thick gray cloud cover still obscured the sky, but dumped neither rain nor snow on his head. He pushed his pace to the limits of his strength, though he took care not to exhaust his horse, nor himself to the point where he would be unfit to fight. By the end of the second day of hard travel he was completely out of the well-patrolled lands nearest to the walls, and into unfamiliar territory.

The landscape changed as he traveled, becoming more and more ragged and broken. Swathes of leafless trees with peeling bark interspersed with bare stretches of thin soil over rock, entirely unarable land. Water was scarce, and had an odd metallic tang in the few springs that did bubble up from underground. The entire place was thoroughly inhospitable, but it did have one benefit; it was easy to find a sheltered dip in the land or a craggy overhang by which he could conceal himself when he finally stopped to rest.

Despite the unseasonable warmth, there was no late-season growth on the trees or meadows he passed, not even of thorny vines or moss. There were no animals, either, not even birds or insects flying past. It was not until he passed through a grove of coniferous trees -- fir and spruce and yew that should have been green and living even in this cold season, but instead were brown and gray and splintered -- that he realized the truth; the land here was not hibernating for winter, it was dead.

The uncanny silence began to intrude on his nerves, as much as he appreciated the ability to hear whatever was coming from miles away. Every snap of dry twig or ring of iron horseshoes on bare rock, every huff of his mount's breath or creak of his own armor sounded unnaturally loud to his ears. With all his senses stretched into hyperawareness, he could _feel_ the presences of demons out there; ahead, sometimes to the side. When he sensed them behind him as well, he knew there would be no turning back.

It felt strange, and wore on his nerves, to be aware of those foul presences and yet not to seek them out; indeed, to move with what careful stealth he could muster and avoid all contact. His instincts ached with a frustrated need to seek out the demons and slay them, to purge the land of their stain -- but he hadn't come here to kill demons, and he couldn't possibly kill them all. All chance of success depended on his getting to the western passes undetected, finding some way to seek out their enemy and destroy him.

Holed up in a barren ditch on the third evening, watching the early winter evening swiftly claim the last of the gray light, he contemplated -- not for the first time -- the stupidity of what he was doing. Tomoyo was right -- he wasn't the first demon-hunter who'd traveled west in search of the source of the corruption, to say nothing of much larger groups of military men who'd come this way and never returned. Unsupported, undersupplied and under-armed, with no better destination in mind that 'somewhere to the west' -- at the very least he should have brought someone along to watch his back, someone he could trade off watches through the long winter night.

Except that there was only one person he'd ever trusted enough to take on as a partner on his patrol.

He shook his head in disgust at his own thoughts, and rested his head against the uncomfortably chilly rock of the sheer slope, half-closing his eyes. He'd been over this before, and he still didn't think he was wrong; he had no right to risk anyone but himself on this mad venture. Nihon could not spare another fighting man right now besides himself, and he simply was not willing to risk his student against the horrific dangers of a demon army. Even if Syaoran, Gods forfend, were killed in the fighting with Ceres, he'd still be better off than having some filthy demon rip out his soul.

As for what he hoped to accomplish alone; well, he'd told Tomoyo he didn't know what he could do, and he still didn't. He knew that there was a poison running through this land that had been unchecked for far too long, a poison he'd spent all his life preparing to fight. Maybe he'd get one chance to exorcise this land once and for all; maybe he wouldn't. But one thing was for certain -- he'd never see the chance if he didn't step up and try.

 _All very grand thoughts, Kurogane,_ a nagging voice whispered at the back of his thoughts. _Now how much of it is noble truth, and how much is just because you know the wizard came this way, and is nothing more than an excuse to see him again?_

Fai.

Damn it all, he'd been trying hard not to think of him again. At least now that he was back outside the walls, returned to his wary half-sleeping doze at nights, he'd been ambushed by no more unsettling dreams; but thoughts of the wizard kept on intruding at the most inopportune time. This broken country reminded him so sharply of the area they'd encountered the bandits that he sometimes thought he saw Fai's silhouette, pale horse riding close behind his own; almost turned to him out of habit when he stopped in the evening and asked him what he thought he could find for dinner. When he came upon a shallow pool at the bottom of a limestone basin, for a moment he flashed back upon their mountain pool so vividly that he could almost smell the scent of wet oak leaves. At random times even while scanning the horizon for threats he'd find his thoughts going back to Fai, thinking of him, worrying about him. Wanting to see him again.

He had to stop thinking like this. He'd come out here to _stop_ whatever the wizard was trying to do, not moon after him. If Ceres allied with the demon-makers, then all of Nihon would be devastated; and if Fai and all his formidable powers were waiting for Kurogane at the end of this journey, then what chance would he have?

No chance at all if he hesitated, that was for sure. Fai was his enemy now, and he had to treat him as such when they met again. If they met again.

When.

\------------------------

  
Kurogane's commitment to bold words and brave thoughts was sorely tested the next morning, when he crested the slope of a hill to find himself nearly face-to-face with a human skeleton.

His horse snorted uneasily and sidled back, and Kurogane grabbed the bridle, attempting to calm the beast as he fought back his own first surge of queasy panic. He had no need to be afraid of bones, especially not human bones -- and these bones were white and picked clean, obviously old. Whatever had made these bones wasn't anywhere in the area any more.

He hesitated for a moment, scanning the surroundings for danger -- but this was no recent kill, and the threat of oni was no closer or further from here than any other place in this accursed country. He fixed his mount's reins to a nearby dead scrub, and walked in a wide circle around the skeleton, trying to determine who and what had gone down in this place. Some of the bones were scattered away down the slope or missing completely, but most of them remained in the same place the warrior had fallen, tangled in the remains of his gear. Anything cloth or leather had long since rotted away, but the hard carapace remained, split open along the back like a lobster's shell cracked by some monstrous knife. Black armor, heavy iron plate of the same style Kurogane himself wore. _Demon-hunter,_ Kurogane thought. _He got this far, at least._ But no farther.

He approached the body carefully, and after a moment's hesitation, turned the devastated breastplate aside. Bones clattered and slid as he moved them, ribs falling away from a desiccated spine. The hunter had fallen face down when he'd been overcome, which fit with the evidence of the monstrous blow to the back. The legs pointed back up the slope, a steep grade that was nearly the only accessible route further into the passes of the west. He'd been running for home when he'd been killed.

Kurogane gently turned over another piece of armor, and uncovered the _mon_ that had fallen away from the decaying clothes to the ground. He picked it up and tilted it to the light, and a cold shiver of recognition went down his spine; it was the seal of the Gingetsu clan. Gingetsu Kazuhiko. Tomoyo had reported months ago that Kazuhiko had fallen in battle, but they had never known where, or how.

Kurogane had known him, once upon a time; they'd trained together. Kazuhiko had been a fierce fighter, both loyal and brave, if a little on the impetuous side. Or maybe a lot on the impetuous side, or else he wouldn't have headed west in the first place; but then, Kurogane was hardly in a position to throw stones about that, now was he?

Kazuhiko would not have run in fear from any battle, nor from any demon, no matter how terrible. The only reason Kurogane could imagine that Kazuhiko had been killed while fleeing east for home was if he had found something out, and had been trying to get back to Nihon with the word. Which, of course, he never had.

Kurogane stood there for a long time, staring down at the remains of the great demon hunter. For one frustrated moment he wished that he had Fai here, not for once out of any desire to confront him or seek his company, but just so that he could make use of the wizard's claimed ability to talk to the dead. He never thought he'd wish himself capable of necromancy, but more than an extra week's worth of field rations right now, he wished he could ask Kazuhiko what had happened to him.

 _What did you find out, Kazuhiko? What word did you die trying to bring us?_

Finally he turned away, with a long, frustrated sigh. He told himself that it didn't matter what the other demon-hunter had seen; no matter what it was, he'd have to keep going forward anyway.

There wasn't time to stop and bury the bones, and Kurogane had no tools to dig with anyway. He promised himself that when he came back this way, _when,_ he would do it for sure. There was no reason that finding this should make him feel this way; after all, Kazuhiko had been dead for some time now, and Kurogane had known that perfectly well. It was just one more stone to add to the cairn he was going to build on the one who was responsible for this, one more death to be repaid in blood when he finally got there.

He just wished he could have some idea what he was getting into, that was all.

\------------------------

Kurogane stood panting, trying to get his breath back, feeling the sweat chill down under his armor into a miserable clamminess. He wished he could take it off, just long enough to wipe the runnels of sweat from down his chest and the lines of his groin, but that would be madness -- the hills were still crawling with _oni,_ and he couldn't afford to let his guard down, not for a second.

But there was no help for it; he was going to have to leave the helmet behind. He lifted the piece of armor to examine the damage, and blew out his breath in frustrated disgust. There was no repairing this, not with the limited tools he had available. He hadn't ducked quite fast enough, and the demon's huge claws had caught him right across the faceplate, crumpling the structure of the metal and very nearly driving iron splinters into his eyes. Blinded, he'd had to finish the fight relying on his other senses alone, sound and scent and the warrior's sensation of aura that he had tried unsuccessfully to teach to Fai, long ago. He snorted quietly at the memory of that day, Fai's insistence on going bareheaded despite Kurogane's heated arguments to the contrary. "If you're not going to wear a helmet, what's the point of even wearing armor at all?" he'd asked; now he was the one who was going to be stuck going half-armored.

With a wearied sigh, he dropped the dented armor-piece on the ground, and turned to scavenge what he could from his fallen saddlebags. They lay a short distance from the sprawled body of his horse, limbs and tail and mane sprawled in disarray on the gravel strand and blood still running in a little rivulet down the slope. He felt a pang of sorrow as he looked at the remains of what had been a fine and graceful beast, and a guilty twinge of relief that he had not been riding his old patrol horse, still presumably wandering the wilds up near the Ceres border.

Perhaps it was for the best, after all. The bitter essential oils that he'd doused his armor with to mask the scent of human blood would hide him, but he couldn't possibly have concealed his horse if he traveled any further west. _Oni_ didn't feed on animal blood, but the presence of so large an animal in a land so devoid of life would be an unmistakable tip-off that someone was here.

He made an efficient bundle of what he could carry that would not hinder him, keeping a wary eye on the mouth of the gully for any more signs of demons -- a few tools, some rope for navigating difficult grades, and his swords, of course. Enough food and water for a few days -- it was all he had left of the supplies he'd brought with him, anyway.

That was all. He couldn't wait here any longer. If the smell of his horse's blood didn't draw the demons all around him, the burnt charnel smell of the demon he'd killed would. He felt a heightened sense of vulnerability, going out half-armored like this, and his hands shook slightly as he used the robe to fix the bundle across his shoulder, where it would not hinder him from drawing Ginryuu.

A low, bubbling hiss sounded from the rocky ridge above him, and he whirled to face it, yanking his weapon from its scabbard. The scraping of scales over rock warned him of a threat from another direction, and he turned slightly and backed against the gully wall, keeping both demons in his field of view.

Looks like he'd lingered too long, after all.

\------------------------

  
Kurogane's head throbbed from exhaustion, and his body ached from a dozen bruises and minor wounds that he'd gained, not only from fighting his way past demons to get here but from scrambling up and down unpathed rocky defiles. He hadn't been able to sleep all last night, or the day before, forced to keep awake every minute to play hide-and-seek with the increasingly persistent demons. Then, all abruptly, when he'd crossed over this final ridge of the pass and started down the descent on the other side, there had been no more demons. They simply had not followed him past some unseen boundary line.

The valley in front of him was unreal.

Kurogane lay on his stomach in the barren dirt of the ridge, staring down at the vista in front of him. After the increasing desolation of the landscape, he'd hardly known what to expect when he reached his destination -- a ruined castle, maybe. A fortress or a prison, built of brooding dark stone, with a wide desert wasteland surrounding it haunted by shrieking demons.

The only building he could see in the valley below him was an elegant, airy manor house constructed of white marble. No one was visible in it through the wide doorway or the windows, but it didn't look abandoned. The manor was surrounded by a vast garden that alternated stretches of smooth, velvety green turf and profusely blooming flowers. The lushly green trees were carefully sculpted, not a twig out of place; they reminded Kurogane of nothing so much as the miniature _bonsai_ that some members of the court cultivated as a hobby. But these plants were fully grown, and filled the valley from end to end. The whole place looked... manicured.

It was as though all the life and beauty of the surrounding deserted miles had been pulled into this one tight spot. But why? How could a place like that be the breeding grounds for a host of demons? What else could it be?

No solution presented itself to his fatigued brain, but he was learning nothing from way up here. Kurogane wriggled up out of the dirt and crept forward, staying as low to the ground as he could and flitting from shadow to shadow as he made his way down the slope.

As he drew closer, the massed smell of thousands of flowers rose up and hit him like a wave; the combined fragrance of it made him dizzy. The closer he got, the more unnatural the perfection of this place seemed. A garden on this scale, this closely cultivated would need an army of gardeners working nonstop to maintain it, but there was not a soul to be seen; no humans, no demons, no animals... not a single living thing.

A wide path of white gravel wound away between two wisteria bushes, leading towards the manor house. Kurogane hesitated, then turned, flanking the path but not stepping onto it. He didn't trust anything that obvious. The silence pressed in around him; there was not even the droning hum of insects in the warm, fragrant air.

Then a flash of movement caught his eye, and he dropped immediately flat behind a clump of bushes. Hidden in the shadows, he raised his head until he could get a look at the source of movement, twigs poking uncomfortably into his hair.

His breath caught in his lungs. It was Fai.

Fai, gliding nonchalantly along the gravel path, seemingly without a care in the world. He was no longer wearing the blue-and-white robe of a wizard of Ceres. Nor was he wearing the serviceable leather and polished steel of his gear when he had traveled with Kurogane. Instead, he wore an outfit whose cut and design was strange to Kurogane, but the quality and richness of the clothes was obvious; it was a deep velvet black, edged with glittering gold.

As Fai turned a corner on the path ahead, the design embroidered on the epaulettes of the uniform caught the sunlight: a black bat on a yellow background.

Kurogane's vision seemed to fill with red, his breath pulsed in his lungs. Without thinking he rose from behind his cover and called out, "Hey! You! What the hell do you think you're doing?"

Fai stopped in his tracks and turned smoothly to look at Kurogane, a slight smile on his face. Kurogane had seen many different smiles on Fai's lips in the time he'd known him; teasing smiles, amused smiles, fake smiles, and the occasional precious gentle, genuine smile. But the expression on Fai's face right now was distant, mocking, and it made Kurogane cold.

Without thinking he stepped forward towards Fai, meaning to confront him and shake some answers out of him. As he moved, the image in front of him seemed to ripple, like the reflection of a pond surface when a pebble is tossed in. Belatedly he tried to stop himself, pull back from the gravel path, but it was too late.

What looked like a solid surface was not, and before he could stop his momentum he was falling forward into a blinding pitch darkness. Colors and shapes without form or context flashed past his eyes. Kurogane had barely enough sense and time to fling the arm holding Ginryuu out to one side, so that he would not impale himself on his own blade when he landed, before the impact that shook him to his bones and knocked him out.

\------------------------

  
When he woke up, his swords were gone, and his arms were pinioned awkwardly behind his back. He pulled against them experimentally, felt the sharp ropes bite into the skin of his wrist, and felt by that movement and the movement of air upon his skin that his armor was gone, too. Disarmed, helpless and bound in enemy territory; Kurogane could not have felt more exposed and naked if he had been stripped of his under-armor padding as well.

He raised his head, blinking against blurriness and a lingering pain, and a shape wavered into his vision. He felt a jolt of recognition strike him, for the clothes -- the black, layered clothes with the strange puffy shoulders, they were the same as what Fai had been wearing in the garden. But the face when it came down into view was an unfamiliar one, dark-haired and dark-eyed.

His captor was a handsome young man, or at least appeared so -- perhaps in his late thirties. What this meant in wizard years Kurogane couldn't even guess. He had black hair cut raggedly short, which fell over his forehead into the glass spectacles covering his eyes. Those eyes, Kurogane realized after a moment's study, were mismatched -- one a sightless, glassy grey, the other as deep and black as a bottomless well.

There was an air of elegance about him, a certain soft beauty to his refined features and matte-black hair. At the same time, his aura was so foul that it seemed to distort the very air around him, like every inch of his existence was wrong, _wrong._

Kurogane struggled to get to his knees, to get his bearings. He didn't have time for strangers, no matter how beautiful or how repellant. "Where is he?" Kurogane gasped, and his throat and mouth felt as dry as if he'd been out for days. "Where's the wizard?"

The dark stranger smiled, and Kurogane was struck by a sudden sense of familiarity -- it was the _same_ smile, same as the clothes, that he'd seen on Fai in the garden. "The wizard? I am he," he said. His voice was a light tenor, pleasant and cultured. "Or were you perhaps thinking of someone else?"

"No! Don't play games with me," Kurogane snapped. "The -- the envoy from Ceres. Fai Flowright. I know he was here, I saw him!"

The dark man laughed aloud, his voice openly delighted. "That?" he said in a disbelieving tone of voice. "Ah, the Nipponese are so amusing. So untrained in even the most basic tenet of magics, unable to distinguish even the simplest of illusions from reality. That was merely bait to lure you into the trap, which you so kindly walked right into. It was nothing but a mirage."

Kurogane flinched back, chagrin at his foolishness washing over him; had he really been so gullible? He remembered the strange ripple in the air, the unreal empty quality of the light and colors; he'd sensed no trace of the man's distinctive aura. No, Fai had never been there at all. "Then who the hell are _you?_ " Kurogane asked. He tried to get his feet under him, wobbling without use of his hands for balance.

"Sakurazuka Seishirou, at your service." The man laid a black-gloved hand on his chest and executed a courtly bow, still smiling. A pendant hanging from his neck swung forward as he moved, its design flashing in the light; a black bat on a gold background. "But perhaps you would be more interested in knowing me by my title: the Master of Demons."

Kurogane lunged forward, mind swimming with the need to attack. Before him was his enemy, the evil he had spent his entire adult life fighting; he could no more have held back from entering a battle right now as he could have kept from breathing.

Seishirou caught him easily, one hand on his chest stopping his momentum, the other raised to his face. At his touch, Kurogane felt a wave of searing cold emanate from that smooth black glove, through his very bones into his brain. He could no longer move; his limbs would not obey him, and he hung suspended helplessly, arrested in mid-attack.

The Master of Demons smiled at him, the look in his eyes even colder than the winter of his touch. "You warriors of Nihon are so ignorant," he whispered, stroking his hand over Kurogane's face almost lovingly. "So arrogant. Did you imagine that stubbornness alone would protect you? That sheer force of will was all that you needed to overcome any obstacle? There _are_ ways to ward your thoughts against an invader, you know, but such things take time and talent, training and preparation, and you, Kurogane, have _none_ of that."

He stumbled to his knees as Seishirou released him, and stayed there gasping, his head hanging down as he fought for some semblance of clarity. The freezing cold was still in his limbs, and he couldn't make himself move. One thing stood out in his mind. "How -- how did you know my name?" he asked, his numb tongue stumbling over the words.

"Oh, Kurogane!" Seishirou said with a condescending chuckle. "How could I not know you? You, of all the demon hunters that have plagued me for years, _you_ are the worst -- tell me, Kurogane Demon-queller, how could I _not_ know your name? I've been waiting for years, _years_ for a chance to have you at last. When I heard that you were coming here at last, I was overjoyed, and I've spent weeks preparing -- really, I was beginning to wonder what was taking you so long."

Kurogane's breath caught. "You knew? Knew I was --"

Seishirou shook his head, still smiling. "Of course I knew," he said. "For a while it seemed like everyone was telling me -- that Kurogane of Suwa was taking the plunge at last, heading over the western passes to try to stem the demon threat while his country is locked in battle against the wizards of Ceres."

When Kurogane managed to lift his head, it was to see Seishirou take off his spectacles and turn them, inside out, down towards him. "It is the simplest charm in the world," he said. "To enchant one set of glass and link it to another. Anything the first pair sees, the second pair also sees. And if the first pair belongs to a willing enough helper -- let's say, a court scribe, whose presence is called for at every formal meeting of the Nipponese court, who has the freedom and access to read through every important document that passes through the highest levels of government -- well, then any other spy would become superfluous."

"Kyle Rondart," Kurogane growled, catching on in a flash. The image of the small, weaselly man spun in his mind, his almost obsequious manner, the strange way the light glanced off his glasses every time their gazes crossed. He should have known, should have! "That traitorous scumsucking --"

He stopped mid-swear, frozen in a moment of horrified realization. If Seishirou was telling the truth -- if he had a spy, a mole that deep in the court of Nihon, then he knew _everything_ that had happened there in the past few weeks. Knew how hard-pressed their country was by the attack of Ceres, and knew -- without a doubt -- that Tomoyo had stripped their magical defenses down to the barest minimum to fight that war.

"No..." he breathed, overcome with horror. "No!"

"Would you like to see my workshop?" Seishirou said pleasantly, turning the subject of the conversation as though Kurogane hadn't spoken -- indeed, as though he were nothing more than a tea-time guest. "You are so interested in _oni,_ after all. In fact, I believe your empress even called you _obsessed._ I thought you would like a closer look at how they are made."

He didn't look strong, but he pulled Kurogane to his feet as though the big man weight almost nothing. Kurogane staggered helplessly, bare feet scuffing over rough, gritty stone; his boots had gone the way of the armor, it seemed.

The building they were in was dark; the only windows were small and set low, and provided almost no light from the outside through walls that must be a yard thick of stone. The only light came from overhead, a strange flat yellow-colored light that was somehow not like either daylight or firelight. The light was not strong, but after the darkness of Seishirou's eyes Kurogane had no trouble adjusting.

Cages lined the near end of this room, a long gallery of that same dark undecorated stone. The floor and even the walls were sticky and damp, and iron-grilled drains were set at intervals in the floor. The place reeked overwhelmingly of demon, but under that other scents fought for supremacy; animal urine and feces, rot and bile, a burned smell with an iron tang like charred bone. The sharp ammoniac smell of cleansers, of antiseptics, almost more nauseating than the rest. And over everything, blood. It was like a doctor's room mixed with a garbage dump, a butcher's midden pile. _This is no workshop,_ Kurogane thought dizzily. _This is an abattoir._

Seishirou chuckled behind him, and Kurogane stiffened and tried to pull away, realizing in a flash that the man could hear his every thought. Instead of releasing him, however, Seishirou pulled him closer, placing his gloved hand across Kurogane's back like two men enjoying a stroll. "I'll give you the grand tour," he said.

They walked forward between the rows of cages, some large, some small. Kurogane saw a wolf, whining and slinking near the back of its cage; in another, an angry bear growled and snuffled. A mountain boar, hide thick and black and warty, threw itself fruitlessly against the iron bars of its pen. Other cages, other animals that Kurogane could only catch glimpses of, or not see at all from his vantage; some hardly the size of his hand.

"Raw materials," Seishirou explained as they walked past the cages. "Templates, if you will, that I can build and improve upon. Back in my earlier, clumsier days, I had to actually sew together the bodies of two animals I wished to join -- a tedious process, and so limiting in its scope. Nowadays, of course, I can do much better. Now that I understand my ingredients better, I merely need to take the _traits_ that I wish my creatures to have, and meld them seamlessly into the whole."

"Traits?" Kurogane repeated numbly.

Seishirou nodded agreeably. "I won't bore you with the scientific explanation," he said condescendingly. "You know, in a way, I have to thank you. Your efforts and those of your fellow demon-hunters actually did me quite a favor. The more of my early, clumsy creations you destroyed, the more I could refine my process, create newer and better _oni_ to replace those that were lost."

Seishirou's hand put pressure on his back, urging him to walk down the gallery. His touch seemed to send a freezing chill down Kurogane's limbs and legs, and he had to stumble to keep up with the other man, or sprawl flat on his face.

"For example -- did you know, it didn't occur to me until just recently to put wings on my creatures?" Seishirou shook his head, as if marveling at his own shortsightedness. "What a simple, elegant concept! It was that poison cloud from Ceres that gave me the idea, of course. Why bother trying to break down the walls of Nihon? Why not just create creatures that can fly over them, bypass all those tedious defenses and attack from above? So much potential..." Seishirou sighed, and shrugged regretfully. "Oh, well. Not that it matters now."

It didn't matter any more. Why not? Because an attack was already underway? He had to find some way to get out of here, take warning back to Tomoyo. Surreptitiously Kurogane tried to look around for potential exits, avenues of escape; but when Seishirou urged, "Come, look at this," Kurogane's head turned helplessly to follow his captor's urging.

They were leaving behind the rows and racks of cages, and coming to a wider-open area, filled with rows of neat tables. The lighting was better here, a strong white light that washed out everything it touched. The tables were filled with dark, bulky bodies, some covered of fur, some sickly gleaming in the light. He clenched his teeth and shuddered, wrenching his gaze away, but the other sights that met his eyes were no better. Half-creatures, hybrid creatures, misshapen forms in all different stages of blending, like a silent frieze of metamorphosis from one state to the next.

"Of course, this is just the basic shell," Seishirou said offhandedly. "Designed, combined, refined... once I have the form and functions I want, increasing the beast's size is child's play." He chuckled. "After all, an _oni_ wouldn't be very dangerous if it were only the size of a small pony, would it? It's tricky, striking the right balance -- too small and they won't be effective, too large and they can't support their own weight."

They walked down the corridor with a growing sense of nightmare, his panic and frozen helplessness lending a feeling of unreality to this whole experience. The pens they were in grew larger, containing horrific misshapen forms that looked like true _oni_ to Kurogane's eyes; although unlike any demon he'd fought before, they huddled in the backs of their cages, cringing from the light and from the approach of the Master of Demons.

Seishirou's voice continued its bland narration, like a local guide explaining some feature to a tourist. "Now is where I must alter them to drink human blood, and to induce the bloodlust in them, that they will crave it above all other things, and it will overcome their stupid animal fears and bestial instincts. You can tell the ones that have the bloodthirst induced into them by the distinctive yellow glow it gives to their eyes -- you've seen it before, haven't you? Oh, of course you have, what was I thinking?

Seishirou's expression was almost rapturous, his voice slowly growing more passionate as he warmed to his theme. "They can feed only on blood now, and need only blood to keep them alive. Human blood, after all, is a far purer form of food than any crude plant matter, or even meat and tissue. Blood is power, because it is the distilled essence of life, and the conduit for the soul -- the human soul, the most concentrated form of magical energy in all the world. The final step of the process is to link my creatures back to me, so that as they feed on blood, the soul is drawn out at the same time, and it flows along the conduit back to their Master."

"And so you feed on souls?" Kurogane interrupted, his voice cracking on a growl, drawing the strength from . "I can't fucking believe your sick twisted nerve, setting yourself up to play God --"

He broke off when Seishirou chuckled, shaking his head from side to side in disbelief.

"Ah, Kurogane, how can it still surprise me how ignorant you are?" he said, in a voice that dripped with patronizing fondness. "What use would I have for human souls? I have no interest in humans whatsoever. It is for _my_ master that I perform my work, collecting souls to gift to him, so that he may use them to power his great spells."

 _His_ master? Kurogane's eyes jolted to the pendant swinging against Seishirou's fancy clothes. Yes, the design was unmistakably the same -- but Seishirou carried no sword, and showed no signs of the mysterious portal-creating power. It might have been the Master of Demons who directed the _oni_ to destroy Suwa, but it had not been him who murdered Kurogane's mother, weakening the wards at the crucial moment for the walls to fall.

Seishirou gave him a sympathetic smile, and patted him on the cheek.

"That's what this is all about, in the end. The process of discovery and creation are enough for me, but my master -- well, I don't pretend to understand what he needs all the power of those raw souls for. His purposes, not mine. But he grants me the space, and the tools, and all the power I need to do my work, and in return, I create for him -- the oni, the self-propelling, self-sustaining collectors of soul energy. Nothing is wasted. My master takes the souls, and my creatures feed on the blood."

"And what do you get out of it?" Kurogane managed weakly. "If he gets all the power, what's in it for you?"

"Me?" Seishirou looked somewhat surprised, as though the question had never occurred to him before. "Why -- the satisfaction of a job well done, of course."

"Why are you telling me all this?" Kurogane asked, fighting to control his voice, not to let it quaver in terror. "I can't tell you anything you don't already know. What do you want with me?"

"What do I _want?_ " Seishirou stopped and turned on Kurogane, the facade of the genial host, the detached academic suddenly stripped away, revealing the monster beneath. "Why, for you to _suffer,_ Kurogane Demon-Queller. To cut you into pieces while you are still alive to watch me do it, awake to scream as your body is remolded into one of my beautiful creatures, as the bloodlust ignites in your veins and turns all that arrogant self-righteousness into endless, burning, ravening hunger. To bring you to heel and tame you, and once you are ready, to turn you once more against your countrymen and watch through your eyes as you devour and destroy all you once swore to protect."

Kurogane stared into Seishirou's eyes, and met a yawning darkness deeper than any midnight he'd ever faced before. It was here, the source of it was all here, the trail of choking filth and evil that Kurogane had been following since the night Suwa was destroyed. The charnel stink that he had always associated with demons was no mere physical smell, it came from _here --_ it was the reek of this man's mind, the touch of his hands that sickened and blackened everything he touched. This was where the evil came from, and as it bent towards him now, Kurogane was helpless in the face of its gloating power.

A leather-gloved hand clenched in Kurogane's hair, and he gasped as a chaotic flood of images and impulses flooded Kurogane's mind. He tried to break free, to pull himself away, but was helpless against the screaming mental chaos that was invading his very being. This was nothing at all like the gentle touch of Tomoyo's mind against him, not even in her most profound anger. This was a violation, a casual plundering of his soul. He could _feel_ the other moving through his mind, casually ripping through his mental disciplines like paper, pilfering his thoughts as easily as a burglar could ransack an unguarded house.

Seishirou placed his black-gloved hand under Kurogane's chin, forcing his gaze up to meet his smiling face. "I am pragmatic man, Kurogane of Suwa," Seishirou told him, and his voice was almost overwhelmed by the roaring sense of wrongness that was pouring off him, a distant cacophony of bestial howls and agonized screams. "But it makes me so glad that when it comes to you, I can freely combine business with pleasure."

 _Pleasure._ Kurogane's head was filled with a cascade of horrifying, sickening images -- the sweet sensation of a scalpel sliding through another living being's flesh. The glee of watching them twitch and flail, to strain against the straps they had no hope of breaking, the sound of the tortured screams that choked out of their throat as the air was slowly crushed from their lungs -- Kurogane was sickened and horrified, but at the same time the almost sexual thrill that accompanied the images was too strong to resist, and Kurogane was awash with Seishirou's pleasure. "Stop it," he croaked, fighting for control of his voice. "Get out of my head... damn you!"

Seishirou laughed, bringing his face down near Kurogane's. "How you struggle," he whispered, breathing foul rot into Kurogane's nostrils, and Kurogane felt the wrenching, disorienting sensation of seeing his own helplessness and fear from the outside, felt the other man's vindictive glee at watching him struggle. "I so looked forward to having you here, in my workshop, under my knife, so that I might teach you your lessons, and make you _mine._. So brave, so strong... and so, so full of _reusable parts."_

Memories surged up against his mind all unbidden, as Seishirou called them up, examined them for anything of interest, and discarded them in amused contempt. Flashes of his childhood home in Suwa, his father, his mother. The sky burning, on the day Suwa was destroyed -- that prompted a sardonic satisfaction, a malicious amusement at seeing his demon's handiwork. Training in Shirasagi castle, weeks and weeks of patrolling in the wilderness. Fai, naked and thigh-deep in water in the mountain pond. _Worthless,_ he could hear the hiss of Seishirou's thoughts, an oily, unwanted alien in his head. _Nothing of use to me at all._

At once, he released his grip on Kurogane's face and stepped backwards, straightening. No longer pinned by that icy, mesmerizing gaze, Kurogane collapsed shuddering onto the floor. Revulsion welled up in him and he retched helplessly, vomiting on the sticky floor as his body fought desperately to be rid of the unclean sensation of the other man's touch, of his magic. He saw the shiny-black boots take a fastidious step backwards, and spitefully wished he could at least have the satisfaction of vomiting on the other man's feet.

A regretful sigh. "I had so many plans," Seishirou's voice came from above him, sounding mildly put out, almost petulant. "So many ideas of how I could use you in one of my new creatures. It would have been my finest work yet... And if you'd had the decency to come one week earlier, or one week later, I would have been free to implement them. But as it is, I am faced with a window of opportunity that I simply can not ignore. So you need not get _upset,_ Kurogane; perhaps I will not use you in my experiments after all."

Kurogane lifted his head, breath catching in his half-choked throat. Seishirou squatted beside him, hand tangling in his hair and pulling him up to face that twisted, monstrous smile.

"Instead," he said cheerfully, "I will simply feed you to my newest demon."

\------------------------

  
Seishirou dragged him to one of the pits dug into the stone, through a trapdoor of solid stone braced by heavy iron bars. Other trapdoors, spaced at wide intervals along the stone tunnel, marched off into the distance; Kurogane, sick, tried to calculate how many demons that would be even if there were only one per pit, but quickly lost count.

This particular trapdoor opened to reveal a yawning black space, and the stench of demon that wafted up from below wrenched Kurogane's already emptied stomach. Seishirou forced him forward, his bare feet slipping over the freezing, slimy stone; he tried wildly to steady himself, reaching for a stairwell or a ladder, but found nothing. It was simply a sheer drop four meters to the stone floor of the vault.

Kurogane landed badly, and his footing slipped in some unseen slime coating the floor below. Without his hands free, he was unable to save himself from a nasty fall, that cracked his jaw against the stone. Stars danced in his vision, and he tasted blood in his mouth.

"Come out, my beauty!" Seishirou called into the darkness, his voice echoing eerily off the stone. "Dinner is served! Come and claim it -- if you can!" He laughed; the the stone trap door slammed shut on his laughter, and echoes of the sounds mixed together, shuddering away in the darkness.

Out from under Seishirou's gaze at last, Kurogane finally felt the paralysis that had gripped him shred and melt away from his limbs. He scrambled to his feet, somewhat awkwardly without use of his hands, and backed up, feet shuffling through the muck until his back hit the stone wall. His eyes hadn't adjusted yet to the darkness, and he was hyperventilating, gaze darting from one shadow to the next as he tried to see what was waiting for him. _Gods above and gods below, help me!_ he prayed fervently, arms straining uselessly against the bonds on his wrist. He needed his hands free, he needed a _weapon;_ his swords, a club with a spike in it, a loose rock, _anything._

Still nothing came at him. It was not as dark down here as he had first thought; the walls of this irregular stone cavern were glowing with a light of their own. Sigils etched into the stone gave off a sickly radiance, some glowing an ugly red-orange, others a pale blue. His nose, too, was adapting to the reek, and through the stench of demon that overpowered everything, he was beginning to pick up other smells -- human smells. Human sweat, blood, excrement -- and the stink of fear. He wasn't the first human who'd been thrown down here, he realized with a chill.

A moan echoed through the darkness, so low and wordless that Kurogane had trouble identifying it at first as a human voice. His initial panic subsiding a bit, Kurogane stepped cautiously away from the wall, and began to advance a few steps into the darkness of the room. He kept an eye out for movement, for the shifting of a dark bulk in the depths of the stone vault, but nothing stirred. Could one of the demon's former victims still be alive down here? If so, how much would be left of them? Dry-mouthed, afraid of what answer he might receive, Kurogane called out a tentative "Who's there?"

 _"Stay away!"_

The voice ripped out of the darkness, a screech from a voice that was so worn and broken that it hardly held any semblance of humanity any more. But just those two words were enough to stiffen Kurogane's spine as recognition jolted through him; he _knew_ that voice. "Fai?!" the word burst out of him, and he turned and scrambled towards the source of the voice. In the furthest corner of the stone room, in a sort of niche carved out of the rock, was a pale shadow. "What the hell, what are you _doing_ here?"

 _"Don't come near me!"_ The pale figure flinched away as he drew nearer, and Kurogane stopped dead in his tracks. It was hard to see, hidden in the shadows, but some details were becoming horrifically clear. Fai was huddled into a corner with his legs drawn up against his chest, arms wrapped around his shins and face hidden against his knees. His limbs were bare and scarecrow-skinny, bones jutting visibly against pale skin that was smeared and encrusted with filth. What the _hell_ had Seishirou done?

"It's... it's me," he called out, trying to sound calming, reassuring. "It's Kurogane. Don't you know me?"

He took a tentative step forward, but the response was immediate. _"Stay back!"_

Kurogane swallowed against anger and dread. "Look," he said, making his voice as gentle as he could, "Don't be afraid. Let me come over there, try to help you. I don't know what that asshole has done to you, but I'm not going to let him hurt you any more.... and you know I won't hurt you. I'd _never_ hurt you."

A noise came from the figure in the corner, starting as a low chuckle and escalating quickly into full-blown laughter. It was laughter that danced on the edge between hysteria and madness, laughter that was only laughter because it was one breath away from screaming. "Hurt me?" Fai gasped, between peals of laughter. "Hurt _me?_ Who's afraid of _you_ hurting _me?"_

He raised his head from his knees and looked at Kurogane, and the single eye that was visible in the shadows glowed demon-yellow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The presence of Seishirou in this story owes a lot to dev_chieftain's wonderfully nightmare fic, Spell. Until I read that fic I had simply been planning to have Fei Wong Reed fill this role in this chapter, no matter how little sense it would have made for his character. But after reading that story I was reminded of this character, and I thought... of course! The Master of Demons is Seishirou, how could it be anyone else?


	16. Bloodthirst

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kurogane and Fai have a very painful but necessary conversation, and come to a meeting of the minds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fai gets a lot of flak from me, I'm afraid -- that's how I express affection towards my favorite characters, by heaping abuse on them. It's been that way in every fandom I've been in so far -- Duo Maxwell in Gundam Wing, Edward Elric in FMA; the one I love the most is the one who gets put through the meat grinder. Fai is just the lucky one in this new fandom!

Kurogane recoiled, nearly lost his footing as he slammed painfully into the stone wall behind him. Suddenly he realized the source of the demon stench, the nauseating demon aura that he'd felt as soon as he was dropped down here. There was no other demon in this tiny cave -- only Fai. Those eyes, those horrible yellow eyes in that familiar face; there could be only one way to account for eyes like that. He remembered all that Seishirou had said, and it made a sudden terrible sense; if he could make demons out of animals, then why not out of men?

Now that Fai had raised his face Kurogane saw the tips of sharpened teeth in his mouth, under his ragged breathing; and gouges on his arms from the tracks of demon claws. His left eye seemed lost in shadows, bruises swelling it shut. The only mercy was that the man's form seemed otherwise unchanged, undistorted apart from the skeleton-gauntness of starvation. But that was no comfort; helpless and weaponless as he was, a man-sized demon could kill him just as easily as a normal one. Once again, he pulled helplessly at the rope binding his wrists behind his back, but it was as intractable as always; there was no give in it, it only bit further into his skin the harder he struggled.

Fai hadn't moved, just watching him from his dark corner. Kurogane swallowed revulsion and dread, and straightened up. "Hey, wizard?" he called cautiously. "Are you... yourself?"

He laughed again, the same half-crazy laughter as before. Thankfully, it cut off before it could rise too high. "You mean, have I lost my wits to blood-craze? Am I under the control of the Master of Demons? No." Kurogane breathed again, his shoulders slumping in relief, before Fai added in a sudden, spiteful hiss: _"Not yet."_

The first instinctive fear and hatred was fading, to be replaced with a horrified pity. How long had Fai been down here? It had been at least three weeks since he left Ceres, more than two since the anonymous note had reported he'd dropped out of contact. Now that Kurogane's eyes had adjusted fully to the light level in the cave, he could pick out other details. Fai was not naked, as Kurogane had first feared; he was wearing a crude-spun, undyed shift without color, like a patient's under-robe. Both the shift and his skin were crusted with dirt; how much of it was rock slime, shit, or dried blood Kurogane couldn't tell. But under the layer of filth, Fai's limbs were frighteningly thin; his bones jutted painfully out of his skin, and his face looked more like a skull than anything. Had Seishirou not bothered to feed Fai at _all_ , in the time he'd been captive here?

His thoughts slid around, to the truth he'd been trying not to think too hard about. _Oh yeah._ Seishirou just had; the meal was him. A slab of meat, tossed down into a starving lion's pen...

"Don't come any closer!" Fai's voice snapped sharply as he took another step forward, trying to see better. He scrunched further against the wall, turning his head away as though avoiding Kurogane's gaze.

"Why not?" Kurogane challenged him, in a slightly shaky voice. "You said you aren't being controlled by him, didn't you?"

"No! But you... you smell like..." Fai's voice twisted in anguish. "Just stay back!" he shouted.

"The hell I will." Kurogane was starting to get hold of himself, and his brain was working again. "I need your help. I can't get these ropes off my wrist by myself, but I need my hands free if we're going to get out of here."

"Get _out_ of here?" Fai laughed again, except this time it tailed off into a sob. "You never change, do you? You can't seriously think we can escape!"

"It looks like you never change, either," Kurogane said callously. "Have you even _tried_ to escape? Or have you even bothered to move from that spot?"

There was silence from Fai, and then what sounded like a low-pitched moan of despair. Fai pushed himself to his feet against the wall and took a step forward, seeming to struggle against an invisible weight as he did so. He arched his neck, his head tipping back. The light shifted over his features as he moved... no, the light _itself_ was changing, rising and falling in flux. The blue-white strands of light that covered the dungeon walls began to quiver and writhe, and the red-orange sigils that covered them brightened as if in response.

All at once there was a great wrench of air, like a clap of thunder, and the walls began to shudder and shake in response. Hastily, Kurogane ducked his head and sought some kind of cover, pulling futilely at his bound wrists in a fruitless attempt to shield his head from falling stones. He was acutely aware of his missing armor, flashing back to the landslide under the pass at Ceres. _Shit!_ What _was_ it with wizards trying to bash his head in with rocks?

But the cell had been designed to contain much heavier monsters than this, and though it trembled slightly, it did not break. The lights on the walls flashed as the air shook in time with Fai's struggles, as though thrashing against some invisible chains. Slowly, his struggles quietened, and the lights dimmed back to their former level. Fai curled up on the stone floor, shuddering and panting like a wounded animal.

"That's... my magic, on the walls," he whispered, barely loud enough for Kurogane to hear over the frantic pounding of his heartbeat. "What's left of it, anyway. Warded... he used the remains of the _geas_ somehow, I don't know. I can't... I can't get it free, no matter how hard I try. So... so as long as you stay on the other side of the cell, you should be safe."

And he couldn't move away the place where his magic was pinned? It didn't make much sense to Kurogane, but then, he wasn't a mage and Fai was. _And Seishirou was, too._ "Fine," he said, his voice coming out more subdued than he'd like. "But if you can't come over here, I'm going over there. I still need you to take these ropes off."

"Are you mad?" Fai hissed. "Weren't you listening? I don't know -- how much longer I can control this!"

 _This_ being the bloodthirst, Kurogane didn't doubt. But his hands were already beginning to throb with the burning pain of lost circulation. If he couldn't get these bindings off soon, he wouldn't be able to use them when did -- if he didn't lose his hands entirely. Damn, why did Fai have to be so stubborn? Well, Kurogane could be equally stubborn. "Fine," he said. "So when you _do_ lose control over it, and come after me no matter where in this cell I am, I'll be helpless to fight you off. Is that what you wanted?"

"No!" Fai denied, horrified.

"Then help me get these damn things off!" Kurogane tried to suppress the claustrophobic panic that wanted to creep into his voice.

There was silence from Fai's direction; Kurogane decided to take this for assent. Taking a deep breath, he stepped cautiously forward, until he was only a few yards away from Fai. Fighting against every self-preservation instinct, he turned around until his back was to Fai, presenting his bound wrists to the other man. His heightened senses caught the stutter in Fai's breathing, heard the shift and scrape of flesh and cloth against stone as he stood. A whiff of demon-stink gusted over him as Fai moved, and Kurogane stifled the instinctive urge to run like hell.

Hesitant fingers began to pick at the bonds on his wrist, sending flashes of pain through Kurogane's hands and up to his elbows. He felt something hot and damp trickle down his palm, from where the sharp ropes had cut; heard Fai's sudden, harsh intake of breath. An impatient noise, and then pain scored his arms as inhuman claws scrabbled against the rope, cutting the skin of his wrists.

Fai's breath was hot and foul against the back of his neck, and he felt the hair on his scalp prickle with horror. His senses did not lie to him; that was a man-eater standing behind him, close enough to end him with one savage bite to his vulnerable, un-armored neck. A spot of wet warmth fell onto the joint of neck and shoulders, and Kurogane shuddered, tensed to bolt, knowing he couldn't possibly move fast enough.

Then his arms were free, and he stumbled forward as his hands swung around forward, agonizing freedom after so long bound. Hard hands shoved him in the back of the shoulders, sending him staggering forward halfway across the cell with the force of it. Gods. For all that he looked like he could snap like a twig, Fai was _strong,_ inhumanly strong, demon-strong. Why kid himself? If Fai really did come after him, hands or no hands, Kurogane didn't have a chance in hell of defending himself. _"Now stay away,"_ Fai hissed, sounding as shaken by the near-miss as Kurogane felt.

Kurogane was glad enough to retreat to the other side of the cell. There was work to be done. If Fai was truly pinned in place, Kurogane reasoned, then perhaps he had overlooked something. He took a few minutes to compose himself, and then began to search their little cell, looking for some means of escape -- or, at the least, something he could use as a weapon, or a tool.

A thorough search of the underground chamber turned up none of the latter. In some ways this pit was disappointingly unlike a real prison cell. There were no benches or dishes, no chains, no metal bars to be pried out of the walls -- no bones, even, from past prisoners. (Kurogane was secretly relieved not to find any of those; at least he _had_ been Fai's first intended meal.) The most he could find were a few shattered chips of stone, too small and irregular even to make good tools, let alone weapons.

The trapdoor leading down here was high over Kurogane's head, but he managed -- with much scraping of knuckles and swearing -- to climb up the rough walls and precariously balance while he fruitlessly searched the hatch for some kind of access from this side. It was a heavy slab of stone reinforced with strong metal bars -- of steel, Kurogane recognized it, not even iron. If he'd had his swords perhaps he could have punched through it -- but then again, perhaps not.

Frustrated, he dropped down and began to examine the walls more closely. Now that he knew what he was looking at, the blue-white veins of light threading across the walls looked very familiar -- he recognized the color from the times he'd seen Fai work magic, flashes of brilliant power through the air. It was strange, unnatural, to see it laid out like this. As he looked closely, the threads of light seemed to be quivering, pulsing slightly; it reminded him of nothing so much as the exposed viscera of the cut-up animals on the slabs upstairs. The vision sickened him, and he had to back away for a moment, collect himself.

The red-orange sigils, on the other hand, were something entirely new and unfamiliar. They spread across the walls like malignant ivy, overlaying the white light, and somehow -- at least according to Fai -- pinning it in place. If he could destroy the shape of the sigils, could Fai recover his magic? Would that be enough to get them out of here? _That's my magic -- what's left of it,_ Fai had said. No. It had to be enough.

He worked for what felt like a small eternity, trying to disrupt the sigils; smearing them, scratching them, trying to break them. It seemed like they were burned into the rock of the wall itself, and nothing short of destroying the rock would break the sigil.

But he wasn't about to give up. He retrieved his chip of rock and attacked the sigil again, trying to make at least a chip of a dent on it. On one wild swing he lost control of his makeshift tool, and it slid and scraped across the walls, right across one of the blue veins of light. Behind him, Fai whimpered.

He turned to apologize, and caught Fai watching him, and a chill passed through him as that lambent-yellow gaze met his, but this time not of fear. Fai quickly looked away, but this time Kurogane could not have missed it. Fai's right eye was unquestionably demon, brilliant yellow and split-pupilled, but his left eye was lost in the shadow, covered by a fall of filthy, matted-blond hair. He couldn't see the left eye at all, and black filth ran down the cheek like the dried trails of tears. Either it had been bruised so heavily that it had swollen completely shut, or...

"What the hell did he do to you?" Kurogane said, his voice coming out low and shaken. "Your eye..."

Fai gasped, and quickly turned his head so that the left side was hidden from Kurogane's sight. "Don't look," he said faintly.

That reaction was all the confirmation Kurogane needed, and fury began to build in the pit of his stomach, overwhelming the cold numb horror and shocked disbelief that had overtaken him. Anger not for his sake, this time, but for Fai's. "That sadistic _bastard,_ " he snarled. "Why did he do it? Just for kicks?"

A weak, hysterical giggle came from Fai's corner, although he still didn't unclench from his tight, self-protective curl. "For kicks? Oh, no," he said. His hand rose shakily to touch under his remaining eye. "Maybe you didn't know... The source of my magic power was in my eyes. Seishirou -- wanted that power. So he took it."

After a moment of silence, his voice came low; "He wanted to take -- the other half, too. But that would have killed me, and he didn't want me dead, not yet. He had too many other uses for me still. He... he told me about you, a little while ago, I... don't know how long. He said --" Fai broke off, swallowed noisily, and went on. " 'I'm bringing you a roommate. Let's see if you can keep this one alive, this time.' He already knew about..." Fai's voice broke down into a dry sob.

Kurogane stood still, unable to stop the images that were forming in his head. _So._ Of course, Seishirou would have read Fai's mind too, as easily as he'd plundered Kurogane's. Found out his most secret hurts and fears, and come up with a way to torture him more effectively than any knife or brand ever could.

Rage built up in Kurogane, so overwhelming that he could no longer contain it; he turned away from Fai, from the lights, and smashed his hand against the cold, eerily-glowing rock. The jolt of pain that flowed back up his arm did nothing to deter him; it only spurred his fury on. He smashed again and again, a wild outpouring of furious violence. Eventually he had to stop, force himself to stop before he broke every bone in his hand. He focused with some difficulty on the wall; all his furious violence had made not a dent.

He'd thought that the Master of Demons had thrown him down here to punish him, but he'd been wrong; he was no more than an afterthought to this. Seishirou had sent him down here to torture _Fai,_ to punish and taunt him with the vision of what he needed and craved with supernatural force; and yet to reach out and take it would be a betrayal of all Fai had ever known. Afterwards, the guilt of what he had done would be a torment worse than any thirst, and it would be one that would be with him forever. Kurogane was no more than an instrument in Seishirou's plan; he'd been reduced to a puppet, a _thing._ Bait. Prey. And it was that degradation that infuriated him worst of all.

Anger was an old, old friend to Kurogane. Even as a child he'd had a short temper, which hadn't improved as he got older despite his mother's frequent chiding. After Suwa, of course, he'd borne away such a load of grief and rage inside him that despite his best efforts at discipline, over the years it had come to color everything he did. Anger was the only emotion he could express freely; it was his first reaction to almost any unpleasant stimuli or situation. He understood that well about himself, and did his best to control it where he could, channel it where needed.

But he had never, _ever_ felt such rage as he did in that moment, when he understood exactly what Seishirou had done. Not since the night of Suwa's destruction had he felt such blind fury, such an overpowering need to lash out and destroy, the desire to obliterate the source of the insult entirely from the face of the earth.

But uncontrolled rage served no purpose -- no, it was worse than purposeless. Just like he'd tried to teach to Syaoran, hatred and anger could destroy you unless you were able to control it. He broke off mid-strike and stopped, planted his feet wide on the stone floor and braced his hands against the wall, breathing deep and hard, fighting for control.

If you could master it, instead of letting it master you, then it became your servant... you could use it to give you the strength, the determination to do what needed to be done. He took a long, slow breath, and raised his head, stared unseeing at the rough stone walls.

He was not going to play Seishirou's game. He was not going to let Seishirou use him; not to destroy Nihon, not to torture Fai. But what else was there to be done?

He couldn't escape from this cell by himself. He couldn't break through rock walls, and it was plain by now that the master of demons had no interest in feeding and watering his prisoners; he would leave them down here until one or both of them were dead.

Fai with his magic might be able to effect an escape, but that magic was trapped by the sigils, and Kurogane couldn't break those either; he had strength, but he didn't have the knowledge. Fai had the knowledge, but he was too weak and starved to use it to break free. Fai's hunger was driving him half mad, and his raging guilt and self-loathing was like to take him the rest of the way.

If Fai lost control of his hunger -- if he killed Kurogane -- then he might gain strength enough to survive, but it would break his mind; there would be nothing left of him. On the other hand, if he didn't lose control -- if he continued to fight back the inhuman instinct to feed -- then Fai would die by agonizing inches in front of Kurogane's eyes. And once he was gone, Kurogane had no doubt whatsoever that the Master of Demons would go ahead with his other gruesome plans, and Kurogane would be -- well, worse than dead, certainly.

Kurogane turned the possible outcomes around and around in his mind, searching for a way out of this trap. In the end, there was really only one thing that could be done.

 _Shit,_ he thought. _I was afraid it was gonna come to this._

But being afraid wasn't an excuse.

"All right," he said, turning around and striding back to the center of the cell. "Okay. Here's what we have to do. I want you to..." He gritted his teeth, trying to come up with the words he never thought he'd hear himself say. "I want you to feed from me."

 _"What?"_ Fai's reaction was predictable; shock and outraged horror. " _No!_ Do you _want_ to die?"

"Of course I don't want to die," Kurogane snapped. "I'm not saying that you should actually go ahead and kill me! But if you take just some blood, not enough to kill me but enough to give you strength, then you can find some way to break the magical restrictions and -- "

"Are you out of your mind?" Fai demanded hoarsely. "You're supposed to be the expert on demons! Have you _ever_ known a human to survive being fed on from one?"

Kurogane had not, so he avoided the answer. "You aren't a normal demon," he argued. "You're still man-size, hell, you're smaller than me. Demons are mindless and under the control of that asshole; you're not. I think you could stop before you killed me. I trust you to know when to stop."

"It's not just the blood," Fai hissed, his wide golden eye making his expression look wild and demented. "Or have you forgotten? _The soul follows the blood!"_

He hadn't forgotten. "Nobody's ever been just partly fed on," he countered, striving for patience and reason. "Maybe the soul doesn't leave the body until the instant of death. Or even if it does, then maybe I'd just lose part of my soul and be weakened, and still survive it."

"Maybe! Nobody knows!" Fai snapped. "You'd risk your life and your soul on stupid guesses? No!"

"Well, what's the alternative?" Kurogane snapped back, his temper flaring. "It's not like this is a choice between this and me living to an easy retirement. Believe me, I wouldn't be asking if that were an option! It's either this, or... or I end up sewn into one of those monstrosities upstairs. Do you think I like that idea any better?"

"Please," he said more quietly, when Fai didn't answer right away. It wasn't a word he used often, and he hoped it meant more to Fai when he did. "Listen to me. I don't want to die... but I'd rather take a chance that I might survive than know for certain that my death will be a horrible one. And this is the only chance I have to help you, too. You know you can't last much longer."

A shudder went through Fai's body, violent enough that Kurogane could see it from here. His hands tightened, enough to draw long scratches on his own arms. "No," he said, mindless, fervent denial. "No, no, never! Never again! I swore that I would never let it happen again! No!"

"Again?" Kurogane asked, cutting across Fai's ranting denial. "This is the second time you've said 'again.' What was the first time?"

Absolute silence in the underground cell, broken only by the harsh, ragged sounds of Fai's breathing. Kurogane was holding his own breath. "What was the first time?" he asked again, more quietly. "Ashura talked to me, did you know that? He told me everything about your childhood, when he first met you."

"He had no right to tell you that," Fai's voice whispered.

"Maybe not, but he did," Kurogane admitted. "Whatever you're afraid I might find out about you -- " Kurogane took a deep breath, swallowed. "I think I might already have an idea."

 _"Ashura doesn't know!"_ Fai's voice came out of the darkness like a lash. "I never told him -- how could I? If he knew -- if he knew the truth --" A break in his voice sounded suspiciously like a sob. "If he had known, he never would have taken me in after, he never would have..."

"What doesn't Ashura know?" Kurogane kept his voice as calm and persuasive as he possibly could. "Tell me. In a few days we might both be dead, no matter what else happens. What do you have to lose?"

Another deathly silence rang through the chamber; this time, not even Fai was breathing.

Finally Kurogane heard the sound of a raspy, shuddering indrawn breath, like the gathering of courage. When Fai spoke out of the darkness, his voice was low, almost dreamy.

"When the guards in black came to take us out of the nursery that night, they said -- they told us... that we were wrong. That we shouldn't be two, that only one of us was real. They took us away to the dark place and locked us in there, the two of us together. But they only ever gave us... enough food... for one."

Kurogane waited, hardly daring to breathe, for fear of interrupting the low reminiscence.

"It wasn't -- it wasn't so bad, at first. We, Fai and I, we always split the food exactly down the middle. Equally. Half for him and half for me. It wasn't perfect, we were hungry all the time, but... it wasn't too bad.

"But then... after long enough had passed, I don't know how long... maybe they started giving us less, as enough time went on -- or maybe we got bigger. It took less steps to get from one wall to the next, and we couldn't stand up straight any more without hitting the ceiling. And -- it wasn't enough any more. We weren't just hungry all the time, hunger was _all_ there was, the little bit of food we got at meal times just made the emptiness worse. Fai got weaker and weaker, we both did, he started sleeping all the time now, he wouldn't answer me when I called for him."

Fai's voice was almost that of a child now, as he sank deeper and deeper into memories. "And then one day... they brought the food, as usual, and Fai was asleep. He didn't wake up when they put the bowl in, not from the light and the noise. I ate my half, as usual, but I was still so -- so hungry, and it hurt so bad, and I... and I ate the rest of the food myself, I ate Fai's share too."

He trailed off into silence; Kurogane stayed crouched near the wall, keeping as still and silent as he could. It was almost as though Fai had forgotten his presence, and was talking to himself -- or to his dead brother.

"So that then when he woke up later that night, and asked for something to eat, there was nothing to give him. He cried a little, in the darkness, but I had nothing... And the next time he went to sleep, after that, he wouldn't wake up at all -- not for all the times I shook or called him. He wouldn't wake up, and he went cold. All because I... I'm sorry, Fai, I'm sorry, I knew it was wrong... if only I had waited just a little longer, until Ashura came, you could have..."

Kurogane waited for him to continue, waited to hear the rest -- but Fai had lapsed into whispered, fervent apologies, rocking back and forth and shaking his head. Finally Kurogane accepted the fact that there was no more to the story, and that Fai had already revealed the truth he was so afraid of.

Now that he had the final piece, it all seemed to fall into place. Fai's behavior had never made any sense to him, not even after Ashura had revealed the tragic circumstances of his childhood. He'd met starved children before, but none of them as weird as Fai; they tended to hoard food, steal it, not avoid it. Not out of any greed or maliciousness, but from that persistent fear of going hungry.

But Fai's fear was different, and now Kurogane understood why. Fai wasn't afraid of his own hunger -- he was afraid of what it would do to others. Fai was fundamentally, irrationally convinced that if he gave in to his hunger, he would somehow harm or even kill those people he loved most in the world. He needed someone he loved and trusted to tell him it was all right, that it was okay to eat, or he'd ignore his hunger even to the point of self-harm.

It made sense. It was so like him. And it was all so _stupid._

"That's _it?"_ he asked incredulously. " _That's_ all you've been punishing yourself for almost forty years over?"

 _"All?"_ In a moment Fai was on his feet in the cell, facing Kurogane, his grief and guilt transmuted into a storm of rage. " _I_ murdered my brother! Don't you understand? He died because of me, because of my selfishness, my gluttony, my, my _lack of control_ \-- he died there, right in front of me! _I_ killed him because I couldn't control my appetite, my hunger --"

"It _wasn't_ your fault!" Kurogane was on his feet too, glaring Fai down. "You did _not_ murder your brother! You were just a child -- a starving child! How could you even blame yourself for something that?"

"I was the only one there!" Fai shouted back, hanging on to his guilt like a favored toy. "Who else could have done it? Who else is there to blame?"

"Anyone!" Kurogane yelled, throwing his hands up in exasperation. "The guards who imprisoned you, the cooks who starved you -- the father who ordered you locked up in the first place! The mother who wouldn't protect you! Why is it so hard to accept that? Did you have so little control over your own life, that it was less frightening to believe that it was your fault your brother died than to accept the fact that _there was nothing you could have done?"_

That one scored a hit. Fai flinched and fall back, all the strength of his anger drained out of him now, leaving only old, twisting agony. "I should have been the one to die," he whispered. "It was true what they said. I am a demon, not a real child. I stole his life. He should have survived, not me!"

Kurogane twisted it back on him; cruelly perhaps, but he was running out of other options. "And if you'd been the one who never woke up, and he had survived instead of you, would it be the other way around? Would that have made him the demon, then? Would it then have been him who deserved to die and you who deserved to live? Or maybe you both would have died, and Ashura would have found two corpses in that cell instead of one. You can't know!"

Fai's face crumpled in misery. He turned his face away, whispered to the wall; "Why? Why didn't I just die?"

Kurogane had no idea if Fai was asking him or just talking to himself, and didn't particularly care "I'll tell you why," he said, advancing on Fai's position in the corner. "Why you lived and he didn't. It was because _you wanted to survive._ You still do; I can see it in you, for all you try to deny it. You've been trying to kill that wish for years and years, but you couldn't suppress it completely. It was why you lived and he didn't, and it's why you're going to feed from me now."

"No," Fai pleaded, but there was no force to it. He had nothing to stand on, and he was slipping. "If -- if I lose control, you'll --"

Kurogane stepped forward, over the self-imposed boundary line that Fai had drawn for himself, in the corner of this little cave. "You won't lose control," he said. "Because you're _choosing_ this, and so am I. I'm offering. I'm volunteering. I _want_ you to do this, Fai, you can't refuse me."

He stepped forward again. His heart was thundering in his chest; he could feel every thudding beat of it in his ears, in his arms, in his neck. There was no way Fai would not hear it, smell it. He could see Fai's eye dilate, taking on an almost human appearance as the cat-slit pupil widened. Saw him inhale deeply as though the air was full of sweet perfume, not the noisome stench of this close dungeon. Fai wavered and took a step forward, drawn almost against his will. How much strength of resistance could he have left in him, with the source of all he craved so very close? Not much, Kurogane thought. "No," he whispered, his voice full of anguish. "No, no, please, no no no..."

Kurogane caught him halfway, reaching out to take him by the arms, and then pull him close against his chest. Fai's skin was deathly cold; he couldn't tell if it was a mark of the demon blood, or just the chill of this horrid prison. Or just a sign of Fai's rapid fading. "Yes," he murmured, a steady counterpoint to Fai's litany of denial. He embraced Fai, pulled him tight, raised a hand to that matted hair and pressed his head close against his neck. "Yes. Do it. Now."

Gods, he'd wanted to hold him for so long, why did it have to come to this before he could do it? In spite of all his brave bluster to Fai earlier, he had no idea if he was going to survive this, or how horrible this death might be if he didn't. He was terrified, his insides quaking, his blood running cold with fear.

But fear was no excuse not to do what had to be done.

Fai's lips pressed against his neck; they were icy cold, too. He felt the other man take a sudden gulping breath, like a diver preparing for some deep and dangerous jump. And then sharp teeth scraped against the side of his neck, and bit down.

It hurt -- more than he'd expected. Really, the wound was no worse than any cut or bruise he'd ever had in battle, but then he'd had hot blood and adrenaline to keep him going. Now he could feel the horribly sharp points as they sank into his skin, the sudden burst of blood as the vessels were punctured. He stiffened up, fighting down against a screaming urge to push the predator away, defend himself. _No. I offered. This is what I have to do. This has to be done..._

The painful, dizzying pulling sensation at his neck seemed to spread through his whole body, until it felt like he was floating off his feet. His arms, too, seemed to be encased in a heavy languor; he couldn't have pushed Fai away now if he'd wanted to. The thought sent a spike of terror through him; he'd been injured often enough to know he hadn't lost enough blood yet for the blood-loss dizziness to be affecting him. This had to be the soul-drain starting, already. The dark underground cell seemed to darken further around the edges, rippling like the illusion of the garden above; only now it seemed that the illusion was not just what he was seeing, but the entire world, a mirage as thin as tissue paper. Any moment now it might tear, and dump him through to the darkness underneath.

The twisting darkness in his vision and the searing dizziness were terrifying; he tried to move or speak, and found he could do neither. Whispers of sound began to play in his ears, voices speaking a language that he couldn't understand, full of hidden meaning if only he could pin them down. Strange lights played over the inside of his eyelids, and he felt a sudden wrench of vertigo, as though he had been pulled abruptly outside himself.

He could see the scene inside the cell now, as though from a point outside himself. This had begun with Fai wrapped tight in his arms, his head bent down to expose his neck to the shorter man. Now he could see his own body, dark and solid but glowing with a lambent red energy; he had slumped to his knees, and only the strong embrace of Fai's arms wrapped around his back was keeping him up. Fai was bent over him now, his mouth still fastened on Kurogane's neck, still hungrily feeding.

Another wrench, and the interim view was gone; he saw only darkness, but the darkness was alive, thrumming with a melody that was both alien and familiar. Not the comfortable, familiar space of his own head; this was Fai's world now, full of brilliant, jagged beauty and the hectic babble of alien voices.

He couldn't see Fai, but he could feel him, hear him; sense him like never before. This was nothing like touching minds with Tomoyo in order to exchange words, nor even like Seishirou's casual rape of his memories. Fai's mind opened before him like a landscape; one paved with shattered, broken thoughts and memories, barely hanging together by a mass of shimmering threads.

He could feel the starvation, now, the unnatural combination of thirst and hunger that drove him wild, became an unbearable emptiness in his center and a ravening pain in his limbs. But he could also feel the horror, the revulsion at that alien feeling, at the monster he himself had become; the loathing, the grief and guilt and shame. All of it now was wrapped around the image of a man, tall and darkly imposing and beautiful. It took Kurogane several moments to recognize that image as himself, and he would have blushed if he could. It was completely unrealistic, too tall, _far_ too handsome, and wrapped about with awe-inspiring sensations of superhuman competence, unflinching courage, and a boundless kindness all undeserved.

Was that seriously how Fai thought of him? Gods, this was embarrassing. _I'm not anything like that tall,_ he complained. Nobody _is._

A sudden shock, as his unexpected presence was registered. The godsawful self-image of himself shattered, swirling into a tempest of fragmented memories, feelings of embarrassment and chagrin and shame. _I never wanted you to see me like this,_ Fai's voice whispered, seeming to come from the very sky and ground around him, shivering with grief and shame. _I wanted to show you only the best parts of myself, so that you would think well of me. I wanted to impress you, charm you, dazzle you. I wanted you to love me, at least a little bit like the way I love you._

 _I can stand up to anything you can dish out._ Kurogane's thoughts were suddenly loud and clear in the echoing landscape, obviously coming from a foreign source. _I'll take all kinds of shit from you, but I won't accept half-truths or lies. It's got to be all or nothing._

The truth, then. A hectic swirl of images resolved in flickering sequence; that terrible morning in Ashura's chambers, as the king raged over Kurogane's disappearance. "You have betrayed me, Fai!" Ashura said, his dark eyes flashing with fury. "Why did you not report the change in the prisoner's location the instant you sensed it through the geas? Were you conspiring to help him escape? Is this how you repay me for all I have done for you? To think that you would choose this vulgar foreigner over me!"

 _No, no, I haven't betrayed you, my King, I swear it._ Fai's thoughts swirled along familiar paths, into a quiet litany of guilt and self-doubt. _Is he right after all? Was this my fault? Did I seek unconsciously to undermine him, was there something more I should have done? I don't even know myself any more._

A gray, depressed trail of remorse and self-blame resolved itself into the next day, when Fai knelt before the King's throne to receive his next mission: an envoy to the mysterious demon-powers in the west. "Bring me some allies to save my kingdom," Ashura instructed him, his voice curt with contempt. "If you can't even do that, then don't bother to come back."

 _Oh, my king, I tried, I tried..._

That memory led to the next one, after days of dangerous travel overland, to arrive finally at the demon-master's court; he was politely received there, ushered into a meeting chamber surrounded by an elaborate illusion of a garden. He was just wondering where this mild-looking wizard found the power to run all those illusions on top of everything else, and why he would bother, when the dark-haired man stood up from his throne, and a golden pendant swung down from the chain on his neck. He'd looked up then, and saw the symbol there....

...and back years and years before, to a time when the world was a distorted, dimly-lit chaos populated by giants, and his twin. The dark soldiers, the strange new ones had come to get them from the nursery; the nursemaid had screamed, and then screamed no more. He was swept up by men wearing this signet, and so was Fai; he saw it clearly, as his face was caught painfully under the man's arm. They were taken away from the cozy warmth of the nursery, and thrown where it was always dark, and always cold. Why? Why were they doing this? Had they been bad? What had they done that was so wrong?

 _We were born. That's all! We were just born!_

...and back again to the throne room, the seizing shock as recognition coursed through him; the abrupt tension that drove away the pretended friendliness of the master of demons, as he knew that Fai knew. Rising to his feet, raising his hand to defend himself, all the while knowing that he was too late, that with this _geas_ on him he had no chance of defeating a master magician in his own lair.

And then it all broke down into chaos like nothing before, waves of heat, flashes of intensely burning light, the tearing strain of struggle against iron shackles and leather straps. Screaming, as the sharp knife cut into his eye, screaming and screaming with no hope that anyone would hear, that anyone would come --

Kurogane fought back against the nightmare tide of images and memories, struggling to get free. _Enough, no more!_ he wanted to shout, but he seemed to have lost his voice; was losing all sense of himself. He was just one more fragment of consciousness in a raging storm of another man's soul. How long had he been here? How much blood had Fai taken from him? He had no way of knowing; he had no feeling at all of his body any more. Was he already dead?

A crackling fire, the twinkling stars through the canopy overhead. Fai's voice, whispering through the dark; the first time, he now realized, that Fai had ever truly been honest with him. _What if you knew your death was the_ only _thing that could save them?_

Yes, he would. Yes, if he could not save himself, please let Fai at least be saved.

He heard his own words echoing back, although he couldn't tell any more whether it was his own thoughts forming the words, or just an echo of Fai's memories. _I trust you to know when to stop. I trust you to know when to stop. I trust you trust you trust you to STOP!_

A searing flash of comprehension; and then there was another almighty wrench as the contact was broken. Kurogane was back in himself again, freezing cold, unbearably weak, his eyes open and dry, fixed on a view of the dark stone ceiling. He tried to move, speak, and couldn't manage either; it was all he could do to take the next breath.

Fai's face filled his view, staring down at him with his one eye wide in something like astonishment. "Is that really all there is to it?" Fai's voice asked in his ear; but the man's lips hadn't moved.

Fai straightened up, still supporting Kurogane easily with one hand under his back. His other hand swept in a wide arc, and a roar of hot, focused _ki_ followed along the path. He spoke, clearly and precisely, words in _nihongo._ " _Chi ryu jin en bu._ "

Fire roared out in a widening spiral around them, hot red fire, Kurogane's fire. It beat against the walls and shattered them, the orange sigils shivering and winking out under the force of the blow. Fai gasped in something like pain as the streams of blue-white light, freed now from the wards that bound them, began to slide across the room back towards him. But Kurogane could feel the overwhelming relief, the cessation of agony, as his magic folded around him like wings, flowing back into its rightful place under his skin at last. The lights in the underground cell winked out, plunging them into natural darkness.

Fai smiled at him -- and Kurogane could feel it although he could not see it -- and turned halfway, still holding Kurogane in one arm. He drew a circle of blue fire in the air, and the air within shimmered and distorted -- too dark in here to see the darkness, now that the light of magic was gone, but he could blurrily see the shifting yellow fog that was growing within it. When it had grown to man-size, Fai calmly stepped forward, and the blackness of the stone cell vanished from around them in a surge of light.


	17. Breathing Space

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> konnichipuu has drawn an illustration for this chapter: http://konnichipuu.deviantart.com/#/d2sos7w If you have a DeviantArt account, please go let her know what you think!

Kurogane drifted towards consciousness out of a dreamstate that was nervous and scattered. Lacking any coherent narrative, they were mostly fragmented collections of images and feelings; and, he suspected, not entirely his own. He groaned; he hurt all over.

"You're awake," a familiar voice said from nearby. A slender hand descended on his shoulder. "Don't try to move yet."

His eyes popped open, revealing a world filled with blurry blobs of color. A lingering sense of panic prompted Kurogane to ignore the advice, rolling over on the -- ground? -- and pushing himself to a sitting position. Almost as soon as he raised his head, a dark dizziness boiled up in his vision, and he collapsed again. His heart was pounding as though he'd just run a marathon, worsening the panicked feeling. The same slender hands from before caught him before he could hit the ground, and eased him back into a lying position.

"Told you so," the voice said.

He opened his eyes again and concentrated on bringing the world into focus. Both the voice and the hands belonged to Fai, who was kneeling beside him, bending down towards him with a worried expression. Above him the sky was filled with light, real light, not the eldritch magical glow of the cellar; they were outdoors. Somewhere nearby, he heard the crackle of a fire and smelled woodsmoke.

"Where are we?" he said; it came out as a croak. His _throat_ hurt, which he supposed shouldn't have come as a surprise, and he was thirsty as hell.

Fai smiled down at him, but Kurogane could clearly read the tension behind that smile. "I'm not exactly sure. It's hard to control the remote locus of a portal when you're in the middle of casting the local one; I couldn't exactly choose my destination. But judging by the position of the sun and the mountains, I'd estimate we're somewhere in the mountains, approximately twenty-five miles southwest of the Ceres-Nihon border."

Kurogane was far too tired to translate that into _ri_ in his head, but Fai wasn't done yet. "And about three times that due north of the valley of demons."

"Demons!" Remembering that particular hazard -- they were still out in the wilderness, you could _never_ let your guard down -- his hands clenched, futilely seeking a sword hilt, and he squirmed, trying to get back up and get on guard.

But Fai's hands on his shoulders pressed down harder, keeping him flat. "Don't worry. I can take care of anything that shows up," Fai told him. "You should lie still. You... lost a lot of blood. I -- it almost killed you."

There was a catch in his voice, and Kurogane heard the guilt and sorrow behind it all too clearly. "Stop that," he murmured, not feeling up to dancing around the issue and choosing instead to get right to the point. "Stop feeling guilty. Remember, I volunteered. And it worked, didn't it? We're both alive -- and safe."

The dark emotions lightened, at least a little. Fai's tense smile became a little more real. "Yes," he said. "Thank you."

Fai moved away, then came back a moment later with a blurry object in hand. "Here," he said. "You should drink. You need to get some fluids back in you."

"I can do it myself," Kurogane groused, but when he reached up, his hand shook wildly and he could not support any weight in it; the cup nearly fell out of his hand when he tried. Giving up, he let Fai help him; one hand holding the cup, the other behind Kurogane's head to help support him. To his surprise, it was hot tea, not cold water; and where'd he gotten hold of that tin cup, anyway?

Fai took the empty cup away and eased Kurogane back down, which was annoying, since he wanted to get a good look at their surroundings and all he could see from here was sky. "When you feel up to it, you should eat," Fai was saying. "I've got some stew going. You need to eat to get your strength back."

"Ugh." The thought of eating now made him faintly queasy, although he thought hunger was buried in there somewhere, as well. Lying back, Kurogane tried to assess his condition. He'd known blood-loss before, but never this severe. Every inch of his body hurt like he'd been beaten by sticks; he felt too weak to move; and he was freezing cold. Although, perhaps, not as cold as he ought to be, lying on open ground in late winter... Kurogane frowned, moving his hands across the surface beneath him. He was lying on a blanket? And another one was covering him.

"Where the hell did you get these supplies?" he asked suspiciously, turning his head to look at Fai. "Magic?"

Fai's aura brightened still further. "Ah! You won't believe this," he said happily. He turned his head and, without moving from Kurogane's side, put his fingers to his mouth and whistled.

From somewhere off to their left, a horse neighed, and Kurogane started as he recognized the sound. "You're kidding me," he said.

"Nope." Fai said, and grinned as he took his hand away from his mouth. "We left all our stuff with the horses when we climbed the pass to Ceres, but Bella still remembered. She answered my summons not long after we arrived here, and she still knew where we'd left the cache, and guided me back to it. Your horse is here too, but he's not as sociable, big lump that he is."

Kurogane fell back against the blanket, feeling faintly stunned and more than a little sense of _deja vu._. Apart from the debilitating weakness, he could almost imagine that no time had passed, that this was a normal morning that they'd camped together on patrol in the wilderness south of Nihon, without another care in the world... no wars, no kings, no terrifying demon-sorcerers...

While he was still pondering that, the fatigue crept up on him unawares, and he slept. The last thing he was aware of was Fai's hand, gently stroking across his forehead and smoothing his hair.

  
\------------

  
The next time he woke up, he felt much better; at least, his body still felt like shit, but his mind was almost clear. And he could, with effort, sit up without the movement causing him to black out, so that was a great improvement.

He must have slept all night, because it was early morning now, with sunlight illuminating the cloud-streaked sky but not yet touching the hill-shadowed ground below. There was still plenty of light to see by, though, and he shivered in the cold morning air as he pushed away the blanket.

Their makeshift camp was in the middle of a round mountain meadow, a gentle dip in the terrain -- perhaps at some point in its history it had been a pond that had since drained dry. The banks on all side were grown thick and high with brambles, the leaves showing the distinct serrated-triangle shape of blackberries. He could see no natural break in the hedge, nor could he see over the top of it; from the outside, it would be almost impossible to either see or get in here. The ground was covered with short grass, filled with tiny ivory flowers; the first growth of spring, pushing forth a tentative effort against the cold.

He could smell and hear running water nearby; some painful twisting located a small freshet springing up from the lowest part of the dell. Two horses were picketed there, his own familiar black gelding and Fai's grey mare. A pile of camping gear was heaped nearby them, and various objects scattered haphazardly around the grass. How the hell the wizard had gotten there and back again in such a short time, to say nothing of getting the horses in here through the briar hedge, Kurogane had no idea and wasn't sure he wanted to know.

Speaking of Fai -- his head turned like a needle pointing north to locate him, on the other side of the fire about a dozen paces away. Fai looked up when he felt Kurogane's gaze, and gave him a tentative smile.

Kurogane watched him narrowly, trying to assess his condition. Actually, he looked surprisingly healthy; he looked better than Kurogane felt, in fact. He was still thin and bony, obviously having lost all the weight he'd accomplished while traveling with Kurogane, but much changed from the pitiful near-skeleton he'd been in the dungeon. He was clean, dressed in his own clothes, (presumably from the same unexpected cache that had produced the blankets and cooking gear,) and standing and moving with ease. Only his eyes -- one still demon-yellow, the other hidden completely behind a carefully-brushed lock of hair -- gave any hint to what he'd been through in the last few weeks.

His scrutiny was broken when Fai came around the fire towards him, holding a steaming bowl and ladle in his hands. Kurogane's stomach growled hungrily at the smell of that steam, and he was reminded that _he_ at least hadn't eaten in at least three days.

"Think you can eat something?" Fai said, coming to sit beside him.

"As long as you don't insist on spoon-feeding me, yes." He reached out to take the bowl, but once again his hands began to shake uncontrollably as soon as they took the weight; hastily, he supported it on his lap, and glared as he defended it from Fai's attempt to reclaim it. "I'm not an infant." To prove his point, he held the bowl firmly in his lap and ate one-handed; he had enough strength to manage that. Gods, he'd forgotten how good Fai's cooking was.

Fai looked embarrassed, and shrugged a little. "Sorry," he said. He fidgeted a little, and Kurogane got the impression that he was vastly uncomfortable sitting here and watching Kurogane eat, when he could not. His strange and incredible view into the other man's mind was gone -- he was unquestionably back in himself -- but a trace of the link seemed to remain, enough that Kurogane could tell his true emotions almost as intuitively as his own. "I'll go check on the horses, shall I?" Fai said, and started to get up.

Kurogane's free hand shot out, and grabbed his wrist. Although his grip was as weak as a kitten's, it was enough to stop him. "Stay," he said, and he made the command soft.

Fai sat back down.

Kurogane set aside the bowl and spoon, and looked Fai squarely in the eye. "How are _you_ feeling?" he asked straightforwardly.

Fai flashed him a bright smile. "Much better than I was expecting to feel today, that's for sure!" he said, although Kurogane heard a touch of evasiveness in it.

"You look a hell of a lot better than you did back in the dungeon. How long have I been out?" Watching Fai, he inhaled deeply, testing the air. It was strange; Fai's scent had definitely changed, but he could only barely detect the smell that he usually associated with demons. The foul reek that nearly overcome him in the dungeon was gone; only a faint lingering trace of it remained, not so much a bad smell as a strange, distinctive one, like the tang of a rare metal in the air. Obviously, a chance to clean himself of the aftereffects of his imprisonment had done him a world of good; but how much damage was left?

"Only yesterday and last night." His smile faded, and he looked away. "It seems there are some benefits to... to my new state. As soon as I provided my body with the proper fuel, it was able to heal itself of most of my other injuries."

 _Other_ injuries? That particular choice of phrasing sent a pang of alarm through Kurogane. He looked closer. Fai was still trying to hide the left side of his face from Kurogane, turning his head away and ducking so that his hair fell over his cheek. "But not that one?" he asked softly, already knowing the answer.

Fai bit his lip, and looked down. "It seems that injuries sustained from before I became a demon don't heal," he said in a quieter voice.

Kurogane reached to brush aside the curtain of hair. Fai leaned back and away, out of reach of Kurogane's hand. "Don't," he said uneasily. "It's -- there's nothing there to see, Kuro-sama."

"Let me see," Kurogane said, letting a note of iron command leak into his voice. He had no intention of letting Fai neglect a serious injury.

It seemed that even now, Fai couldn't resist Kurogane. After a moment, his shoulders sagged, and his head dropped forward. Kurogane completed his movement, brushing the concealing fall of hair carefully back and smoothing it over his temple, bringing his hand down to cup Fai's cheek and turn his face towards the light.

Fai had made an obvious effort to scrub himself as clean as he could, with cold water and no soap, but his efforts had not extended here. Perhaps the injury had still been too raw and painful for him to be able to clean it properly by himself. It seemed that some healing had taken place nonetheless, since no new blood seeped from the wound; it looked like it had been closed for a week, although still a raw and ugly red crusted with black scabs. A series of now-sealed scalpel cuts sliced the flesh around -- and in -- the eye, seeming almost to form some kind of symbol or sigil; Kurogane wondered what sick purpose or whim had driven that knife. Dried blood mixed with salt tears formed streaks around the orbit of the eye. He could feel Fai's sick shame as though it were his own, at the ugliness of the mutilation, the eyelid torn to useless shreds and doing nothing to conceal the gaping hollow.

Kurogane's breath hissed in unexpected sympathy as he saw the extent of the damage, and the soup he had gotten down threatened to curdle his stomach. "I'm sorry," he whispered, feeling the sickness spread to his heart. He'd wasted weeks, idling around uselessly in Nihon, while Fai was being tortured. "If I had only gotten there sooner... maybe..."

Quick as a flash, Fai's hand darted out and caught at Kurogane's wrist; Kurogane was startled once more by the iron, inhuman strength of his grasp. "Don't apologize for this," Fai said, and anger and some stranger, more complex emotions made his voice vibrate dangerously. "Not to me. Not you. Not _ever._ "

Kurogane was speechless. He could feel the raging tempest of Fai's emotions, but he couldn't fathom what drove them. Fai took a deep breath, perhaps sensing his own bafflement in turn, and closed his eye, pulling Kurogane's hand back up to press against his clean, unscarred right cheek. "You saved me," he said, his voice almost too soft to hear. "When I was lost in the dark you came and brought the light back to me. You gave me _everything._ So don't you ever apologize to me for things that were _never_ your fault."

Kurogane swallowed painfully, and nodded silent acceptance. He wouldn't push Fai, not now, not when the memory of pain was still so fresh and raw. Instead, he changed the subject.

"So I'm 'Kuro-sama' again now, am I?" he said. It gave him a little shock, to realize how much he had missed those stupid nicknames. "Whatever happened to 'my lord Suwa?' "

Fai blinked, and looked up at him again; he lowered their caught hands together to his lap, but didn't let go. He smiled again, and this time it had a tinge of apologetic embarrassment. "I never knew you hated being called by your name so much, that you liked the nicknames better," he said. "You never said."

He'd never admitted that to Fai. How the hell had he -- _oh._ Kurogane had been inside Fai's mind, close enough that their souls had touched; he'd seen Fai's truest thoughts and feelings in there. It only made sense that Fai would have seen something of himself in return.

Which meant -- oh. Oh, _crap._

Swallowing against panic, Kurogane tried to remain nonchalant. "Don't get me wrong," he said. "I hate those damn nicknames, too. It -- it's just that you started calling me by my name on the same night you tried to -- " He broke off, feeling the stiffening unhappiness in Fai's shoulders. He looked away. "The night you stopped being my friend," he said instead.

"I never stopped wanting to be your friend, Kuro-sama," Fai said softly, but there was a ache and a yearning in his voice that Kurogane could not ignore. He remembered what he'd seen inside Fai's mind; he knew the truth about Fai's feelings from him. They ran much deeper than friendship, even the close warrior bonds of companionship.

And if the reverse held true as well... then Fai knew what Kurogane had been trying to hide from him, from himself, from everyone. But he respected Kurogane's privacy, his reserve. He would never bring it up if Kurogane didn't first. But he would always be wondering, waiting, hoping...

It was cruel to pretend any longer. What was he hoping to save? His pride? To hell with that; like he had any left these days anyway. He took a breath and reached to take Fai's hand again, lacing their fingers together and squeezing tight. Fai looked up, eyes widening, breath catching with hope. "Kuro-chan?" he said faintly.

"You've always been someone I consider a friend," Kurogane said firmly. "And... and not just a friend. Something more than that. You've become someone very special to me, and..." He stuttered awkwardly, groping for the words. Damn, they should have sent a poet. "And I've fallen in love with you."

There. He said it. Even in his confidence, Kurogane felt his heart speeding up and his breath seize; how much more painful could the uncertainty have been for Fai, who had no such surety? Every nerve on edge, Kurogane waited for a response.

After a moment of stunned and gawking silence, it came in a thoroughly unexpected format. Fai began to laugh; first as a low chuckle, then escalating to loud, full-throated gales of laughter, doubling him over with lack of breath.

At first, Kurogane didn't mind all _that_ much; at least, it was a relief to hear real happiness in Fai's laughter again, not the frightening hysterical cackling that had heralded madness when they'd been trapped together. But after several moments when Fai showed no signs of stopping, Kurogane felt pride begin to make a reappearance. "Oi," he said, annoyance edging his voice. "You know, this is not the sort of response that a man who just made a declaration of love wants to hear."

"S-sorry," Fai gasped, raising his left hand to awkwardly swipe at the right side of his face, wiping away tears of laughter from his flushed cheek. "It's just -- so -- _funny!_ Don't you see?!"

"No, I don't see!" Kurogane snapped, beginning to feel genuinely stung. "I was serious, mage, so I don't appreciate you treating it like a joke!"

"No, no -- it's not you, it's --" Fai took a deep breath, visibly getting hold of himself, although now and then a giggle escaped his control, hiccuping his speech. "Seishirou -- he kept telling me, you see -- what a great joke it was -- that I was in love with someone I was going to have to _kill!_ He -- he kept telling me how f-funny -- that I'd fallen in love with a demon-hunter -- someone who would despise me for, for, for what I'd become!"

Kurogane stilled, his anger and hurt pride draining away. "That's... not actually funny at all," he said numbly. Just the thought of it made him feel ill.

"Yes, but don't you see? That's why it's funny! Because he was wrong!" Fai's voice rang out like a clarion trumpet in the still, cool air of the mountain meadow, bubbling over with joy. He threw back his head, and laughed to the sky. _"Wrong!"_

Kurogane couldn't help but feel moved, although he still wished Fai would quit laughing. He pulled Fai's hand insistently, trying to get him to shut up. "Of course he was wrong," he growled. " _Everything_ that bastard said was wrong. Everything he _was_ was wrong. Everything he said to you, just retroactively assume it was wr --"

He was cut off mid-sentence when Fai abruptly leaned forward, his free hand circling around the back of Kurogane's head to tangle in his hair, and kissed him.

Kurogane's primary emotion was alarm; first at Fai's sudden movement, which melted quickly as the warmth of that kiss registered with him; second as Fai's lips parted under his and his tongue ran questingly along his lips, seeking entrance; third as he tried tentatively to return the favor, and encountered Fai's fangs; and at last when the extended length of the kiss threatened to black him out again for lack of air.

He lay back against the blankets, shaking and wheezing like a much older man; and Fai lay back with him, curling his too-thin body around Kurogane's. This time, his was the warmer body, and Kurogane pulled him close, grateful for the heat.

  
\------------

  
By mid-afternoon, however, the sense of urgency was growing too frantic to deny, and Kurogane was fretful and impatient. Twice he tried to push himself to stand and do warm-up exercises; the second time Fai didn't even bother to force him to sit down, simply waiting until he collapsed and catching him before he hit the ground.

"I have to go," Kurogane said fretfully, calculating the distance to his horse. All he needed to do was get to the saddle, and then the horse would be doing the work, right? "I have to ride. It might already be too late!"

"Where do you think you can ride to?" Fai said, exasperated. He wrapped his hands around Kurogane's upper arms, holding him still. "You won't get half a mile before you fall off the horse, and probably break your neck."

"I need to get back home!" Kurogane knew Fai was right, that he was in no condition to ride, but damn it, he didn't have a choice. Demons took time to travel overland just as people did, but they could move as fast as a man ahorse; the first one would be arriving at the outermost walls anytime now. "Seishirou knows that the defenses are down -- he's going to send all his _oni_ to attack us while we're weak. By the time anyone sees them coming, it'll be too late to defend!"

Fai sat rather heavily next to Kurogane, not letting go of his arm. He didn't have to be told what the results of that would be; he'd seen the ruins of Suwa. When he spoke again, his voice was gentle and apologetic. "Even if you could ride, it'll take you days on horseback to get back to Nihon. It will be too late then, too."

"I have to warn Tomoyo somehow!" Feverishly, Kurogane cast about for some alternatives. If only he'd had someone to send to ride courier, or a homing pigeon. He didn't have those. But he had Fai. Fai was a wizard, and released now from the dampening effects of the _geas._ He twisted to look up into Fai's face. "Can't you get me there sooner, with one of those portal-spells?" he asked, an unaccustomed note of pleading in his voice.

Slowly, regretfully, Fai shook his head. "I don't have enough control over it," he said lowly. "I wasn't able to decide where the portal would take us -- i just figured that anywhere _away from there_ would be better. But maybe I can..." He stopped mid-sentence.

Kurogane pounced on that hesitation. "You can do something?"

Fai was frowning, looking abstracted. "Maybe I can send a message. Normally I wouldn't be able to, but..." He looked back up at Kurogane. "This Tomoyo, the _Tsukuyomi_ \-- she's a powerful mage, isn't she?"

Hope began to flare in Kurogane's heart. "I don't -- I don't know how to answer that question." He recalled what else Fai had said about mages -- yes, and he recalled that Fai was one, as well. "She can talk to people in their minds, without using her voice. Is that what you mean?"

"To be heard by non-mages, she'd have to be," Fai answered. He was back to frowning, and he absently tugged at a stray lock of hair, pulling it back from his face. "I can try to reach her, mind to mind. It will take an enormous effort, and Nihon has its own ways of discouraging unwanted presences..."

"But you'll do it?" Kurogane said insistantly.

Fai gave him a strained, weary smile. "I can't exactly say no, can I?" he said quietly. "I owe you too much... after Seishirou's dungeon. I'll do whatever you ask of me."

There was a strange pang that came with those words, a feeling like grief and a long weariness. _Yes, for the rest of my life, whatever you ask._ "No!" Kurogane was distracted -- briefly -- from his fervent concern over Tomoyo in order to address this. He grabbed Fai's arm, pulling him around to face his startled expression square on. "That's _not_ how this is going to work. What I did back in the dungeon, I offered of my own free will, with no expectation of return -- with no thought of you _owing_ me anything. It was the only way I could think of to get out of there, that's all it was!"

"But --" Fai looked confused, distressed. "You saved me. I owe you -- what you did, I can't ever repay --"

"I didn't do it to put you in some kind of debt to me, dammit!" Kurogane said, frustrated by his inability to communicate even this simple concept to Fai. "Yes, I saved you. I preferred that at least one of us would escape alive than that we both would die down there. But that was _my_ choice to do that, of my own free will. I volunteered; _you_ didn't force or trick me into it in any way. You aren't responsible for what _I_ choose to do!"

Fai's expression was changing from confused to faintly stunned, and Kurogane began to hope that he was making an impression. Even if the thought of someone wanting to help him for his own sake, with no obligation or return favors, seemed to be so alien to Fai. He released Fai's arm, and continued more quietly, "And I hope that you'll help me now, because I am asking -- I am _begging_ \-- for that help. But I want you to do it because it's something _you_ choose to do, not because you feel like you _have_ to do it, because I have some sort of hold over you. I don't _want_ to have that hold over you."

Fai took a deep breath, wrapped his arms around himself. "All right," he said quietly. "I'll try it. But it won't be easy -- it's a long way, and the magic-users of Nihon have their own ways of keeping out unfriendly presences. Just getting past the magical interference posed by the wards will be difficult enough... I'll need your help."

"Anything," Kurogane said immediately, throwing himself into the project whole-heartedly. "What do you need?"

"Mostly what I need from you is _guidance._ I need you to come with me, but you don't... Do you know anything about astral projection?"

Kurogane shook his head. Fai looked daunted. "Trance states? Meditation?" he tried.

"Of course," Kurogane said, feeling slightly insulted by the question. Meditation was a fundamental element of the discipline of _bushido,_ and he'd learned it along with all his other skills when he'd still been a boy.

Fai looked relieved. "Oh, good," he said. "We won't be starting _totally_ from scratch."

  
\------------

  
Under Fai's direction, Kurogane slipped into the light trance-like meditation state he'd been taught by his father. It wasn't easy to clear his mind -- worry and fear and urgency and a fiery new curiosity about what Fai proposed all competed for attention in his consciousness. But that was the whole point of meditation, to be able to clear your mind of intrusive thoughts and focus on the purity of steel and movement. His breathing slowed, deepened, and he began to feel light-headed from more than just blood loss.

The chilly meadow around him faded, rendering in fog and shades of gray -- but of Fai, kneeling in front of him, he became more aware than ever. There was a channel between them, he became aware, like a subtle path of least resistance that linked the two of them. Fai reached out through that channel with hands that shimmered like starlight, and pulled him in.

 _Come on,_ Fai whispered; all bemused, Kurogane went.

Everything took on a surreal, dream-like quality; the sky and horizon seemed blurred into an indistinguishable fog, shot with strange glowing lights. The grey-colored landscape flowed beneath them, and Kurogane wondered if this were what it was like to be a bird; although surely even birds couldn't travel this fast. Gradually the rugged slopes gave way to gentler hills, then to wooded plains that seemed vaguely familiar to Kurogane from his patrolling days -- although he couldn't be sure, since he hadn't exactly seen them from this vantage before.

At last they came to the walls, and Fai's guidance slowed to a stop. In this view they were not the familiar, sand-colored stone walls that Kurogane knew; instead, the wall was a glowing patchwork of lights, shot through with harsh bright beams that trailed off into infinity in the sky. Was this how Fai saw the world? Kurogane wondered with a kind of detached amazement.

Fai's presence nudged against his. _This is as far as I can go,_ his voice seemed to say. _You have to take us the rest of the way in. Do you know the way, Kurogane?_

Of course he did. After a few moments of indecision, Kurogane took the lead, once again flowing over the gray landscape -- although much more slowly -- south along the wall, towards the Red Sunset Gate. It was the one he knew best, although he used others from time to time; and the road from there led straight in to the palace.

The fog seemed to draw closer about them, shrouding in mystery things even a few feet from the road; but Kurogane led the way confidently on, through the mulberry groves and sunken barley fields on either side. Slowly the winding road became straight, and unpaved dirt became cobblestones, and they were at Edo, passing through the guarded gate like a pair of ghosts.

 _Tomoyo,_ Fai prompted him, when he hesitated in confusion between the castle and his home. _We need to find Tomoyo._

That was easy enough; she was his princess, and he could find her anywhere. He turned away from the nobles' quarters and led the way up the hill to Shirasagi castle. A strange medley of lights and shadows -- not in the places he had expected to find them -- threatened to throw him off the trail, but after several false starts and restarts, he finally found Tomoyo.

His princess was in one of the interior chambers, which was why he'd not been able to find her at first; but once they were close, Fai had been able to take over once more. A blur-featured servant stood behind her, brushing out her hair. Kendappa did not seem to be in the vicinity, and neither did Souma. Sent north to war? Kurogane wondered, too dreamy to be afraid at the thought.

Fai's presence sharpened, until it seemed almost like he was actually standing there, his form picked out in lights and grey shadows. "Tsukuyomi, hear me!" he called out; and his voice, although it seemed to come from a great distance, sounded like a real voice again.

Tomoyo turned in her place, and her violet eyes widened as she took in her unexpected visitor. "You!" she gasped, and her voice too sounded clearly in the shadows of the room. The blurry servant paused, hovering hesitantly, but Tomoyo waved her away. "Who are you? How... how did you come to be here?"

"I apologize for entering your sanctuary without leave, my lady," Fai said, sounding formal, "but the need was urgent. I am Fai Flowright of Ceres, and I came to bring you warning of a great danger in the west."

"Ah..." Tomoyo settled back down, her eyes growing intent. She did not seem to see Kurogane, hovering wordlessly by Fai's side; he wished he knew how to do the same sharpening-trick as Fai had just done. "The wizard of Ceres. I have heard so much about you... So, at last we meet."

Fai bowed, a strange but formal-looking movement with one hand spread over his heart. "I can only regret that it was under such circumstances. I cannot remain thus for long; will you hear my message?"

Tomoyo nodded assent; her face was set in a grave frown. "Speak, my lord. I will at least listen."

"I was sent out by my king Ashura of Ceres some weeks ago, as diplomatic envoy to the dark magician in the West, who commands the legion of demons."

"Aid for Ceres in the war against Nihon?" Tomoyo sounded suspicious, as well she might, Kurogane thought.

Fai just nodded. "King Ashura is desperate, my lady. However good a front he presents to you, he knows he does not have the troops or the resources to secure his advance. He must have allies, or he will lose everything. But the Master of Demons is ally to no one. He captured me..." Fai's voice -- and his image -- wavered, and Kurogane became alert in concern. But Fai pulled himself together in the next moment. "And made clear his intentions; that all kingdoms of men would be his food, particularly those souls who are strong in magic."

"Had you but asked me, I could have saved you the trip," Tomoyo responded tartly. "My visions of the Master are clouded, but I know that he is the enemy of all human life."

Fai shrugged with a sheepish little smile, but then his visage grew serious, intent. "But listen. Your vision of him is obscured, but the reverse is _not_ true. The Master has knowledge of all the doings at your court. He knows about the war with Ceres; he has heard that you have stripped all your southern defenses to fight it. He has launched an armada of demons, to strike quickly while your border is exposed. You _must_ move quickly, or all Nihon will be lost to them; and empowered with all the souls of the Nihon empire, Ceres will quickly fall to him as well."

Black dismay rippled from Tomoyo as she took this in. "This is your message?" she whispered, sounding distraught.

Fai nodded, looking grim. "I barely escaped from him with my life, lady, and could not have done so at all without the aid of your champion. Please, the demon attack has already been launched. You must defend your borders, or all will be lost."

Tomoyo was silent for a moment. Kurogane stirred in alarm. Did she doubt Fai's truthfulness, suspect some ruse? Admittedly, it would sound suspicious for an agent of Ceres to call for Nihon to weaken their offensive forces in the middle of a pitched battle, but there was no time to lose in doubt. She _must_ be made to believe!

"Kurogane is with you?" Tomoyo whispered at last. "He found the demon's lair... and he escaped alive? Is he all right?"

"I'm here, Tomoyo," Kurogane's own voice intruded into the silence. There was a shock of surprise as he spoke, not only on Fai's part but on his own; apparently Fai hadn't expected him to be able to do this. Then again, he hadn't thought he could either. "Listen to him. He speaks the truth."

"The truth is not in doubt, my dear Kurogane," Tomoyo said, and the warmth of her gentle correction struck a sudden pang of homesickness in him. "When speaking mind-to-mind like this, one cannot lie. But if the danger is so near upon us, then there is nothing we can... There is no time to..."

Time, it seemed, cut both ways; the vision of the inner chamber was beginning to waver, pulled away by invisible tugs like the current of a river. He sensed strain in Fai, and accurately judged that he couldn't maintain such an extended connection for long. "Be strong, Tomoyo," he called out, and his own voice sounded fainter.

"Farewell, my lady," Fai's voice said, and his voice too was hushed down to barely more than a whisper. "I regret that we had to meet under such desperate circumstances. I only wish I could help."

"You've done all you can... and I thank you," Tomoyo's voice whispered back, and then she was lost in the mist.

  
\------------

Kurogane blinked back to himself, still sitting _seiza_ in the clover of the mountain meadow, and shuddered; he was freezing cold. A few paces away, Fai was sitting bent-over, his arms clasped tightly around his middle, gasping huge gulps of breath. According to the evidence of the fading light, hours had passed.

"Hey," he said, and had to stop to clear his throat; his voice was rusty. "You okay?"

Fai nodded without speaking, and then uncurled himself to flop on his back into the grass, eyes closed. "Just tired," he murmured, before Kurogane's alarm could get too great. "Haven't done anything like that in a while... took a lot out of me. Just give me... a few minutes... to get my wind back."

"Do you need anything?" Kurogane asked hesitantly. If he'd depleted himself, run down too far on his energy reserves... he would need to eat, wouldn't he. "More blood?"

The idea of Fai biting him again, draining more of his blood, wasn't a particularly pleasant one, but it was no longer as frightening as it had been. Now they knew that Fai could feed from him safely -- not exactly without harm, but without risk of either killing him or destroying his soul -- it was both cruel and unjust to deny him. Especially not when Fai had undertaken what was obviously a very difficult task on Kurogane's behalf, for his country's sake. By all rights Fai ought not to care two bits what happened to Nihon, if anything he ought to take Ashura's part. But he hadn't. He'd done it because Kurogane had asked him.

Fai rolled over and pushed himself up on his hands, staring at Kurogane with an unfathomable expression. His glowing-yellow eye was intense, and Kurogane found himself growing nervous, unable to make sense of the emotions swirling behind it. "What?" he finally asked.

Fai pushed himself to his feet, crossed the distance between them in two strides, took Kurogane's face in his hand, and kissed him. Kurogane was startled; Fai's swift, fierce kisses always had that effect on him. It wasn't a bad feeling, but it was like stepping out into a fierce storm and smelling lightning, being hit in the face with a gust of cold wind and rain. Exciting, but frightening at the same time -- and it effectively robbed him of the capability, or the desire, for speech.

Finally Fai lifted his face until he could meet Kurogane's eyes, and his hand stroked over Kurogane's cheek, brushing back a lock of hair over his ears. "It's not like normal hunger," he said quietly to Kurogane. "Even a small amount of blood seems to sustain me for a very long time; I haven't even begun to be hungry again. I don't think I'll need to eat more than once a week, at the most. And you're still weak, and can't afford to lose any more blood now. So no, I don't need to eat again now."

"Oh." That seemed to be the most intelligent thing Kurogane could come up with; after a moment, he asked, "So why did you do that?"

Fai closed his eyes and leaned in close again, until his forehead rested against Kurogane's. "Because I love you," he said softly, and kissed him again, briefly and sweetly. "Because you offered."

  
\------------

  
They sat quietly for a long time, watching the short day turn into evening and then night; Fai got up once or twice to put more fuel on the fire, but soon returned to snuggle against Kurogane again. During one of these trips, watching Fai move around their small campsite, Kurogane came to a decision that he'd been working up to for some time.

"I want you to teach me about magic."

Fai's response would have been almost insulting if it wasn't so comical. He whipped around to face Kurogane so fast he almost dropped his stack of firewood, and gawked at him like a fish. "You want me to _what?"_

"You heard me," Kurogane said, glowering.

"You want _me_ to teach _you_ _magic?"_ Fai stared at him, the flickering firelight playing over his stunned expression.

Kurogane wasn't sure whether it was the 'him' part or the 'magic' part that was causing the trouble. "Well, yes!" he said, exasperated. "You told me... The first time you met me, even, you told me you thought I had some ability at magic, didn't you? And since then you never shut up about it!"

"Well -- yes," Fai said, sounding cautious. "But -- you seemed so offended by the idea, I didn't want to... To be frank, Kuro-chan, this was the last thing I ever thought I'd hear you ask!"

Kurogane rolled his eyes. "So I thought that magic was a female thing," he said. "I understand now that I was wrong. It's just... it's one thing to accept the idea that men can can do magic _at all..._ and another thing to admit that _I_ might be..." He trailed off, at a loss.

Fai came over to sit by Kurogane, and put a hand on his shoulder. "So what changed your mind?" he asked quietly.

Kurogane shook his head helplessly. "If if were just you, it would be one thing. But Seishirou..." He hesitated, then plunged on. "He _gloated_ over how much I didn't know. Told me that anyone with my amount of power should have been able to see through his lies, fight off his -- his --" He was floundering now, keenly feeling the lack of terminology, of the proper concepts to express his frustration and distress.

"It's not as easy as he made it sound," Fai offered, stroking his hand down Kurogane's arm in a soothing manner. "He was powerful, and skilled in his own twisted way -- and he used a perverted kind of magic that even a skilled wizard would have trouble resisting. You have nothing to acquit yourself of, in tangling with him."

Kurogane shrugged irritably; immediately Fai pulled his hand back, and Kurogane regretted the movement. "It's not just that," he said, letting a hint of apology into his tone. "Seishirou -- and Ashura -- they both told me I had magical power, but that I didn't know how to use it. And I've always been taught that a weapon you don't know how to use is a weapon in the hands of your enemy. It was hard for me to accept that I have it, but now that I _have..._ I'd damn well better learn how to use it."

After a moment, Fai leaned against Kurogane's side; this time, he did not shrug him off, but instead leaned back into the touch. "I'm not sure how much you really need me to teach you," he said. "Every culture expresses magic a little bit differently. Within your own discipline, you already know how to use magic perfectly well. There's nothing I can teach you there that you don't already know."

"But there's more, isn't there?" Kurogane insisted. "There's so much I realize I don't know -- not the way that _we_ do... magic, but the things that you seem to know that I don't. Half the time you do something I don't even know what you're doing; I don't know what you're even capable of! All those rules, all that background knowledge, that you throw around so easily... I don't even know how to talk about what I need to know," he finished in frustration.

Fai moved to speak, but Kurogane wasn't quite finished; he laid one finger across Fai's lips, silencing him. He looked straight into Fai's eye. "When we were trapped in that dungeon," he said quietly, "I didn't know what was wrong with you. I didn't know how to help you. It was sheer dumb luck that we stumbled onto a solution that got us both out of there alive. Even if it's knowledge that I hopefully won't ever need to use, I need to _know._ I don't ever want to be that helpless in the face of your suffering again."

He moved his finger away, but it seemed he'd achieved an unlikely event; Fai was speechless. After a long moment, Fai slipped his arm around Kurogane's back, leaned his head against his shoulder. "All right," he agreed at last. "There's a lot to learn, more than anyone can learn in one single lifetime, but I'll try to teach you what you want to know."

He grinned suddenly. "If I could become an apprentice demon-hunter, I guess it's not so strange for Kuro-pon to become an apprentice wizard! Stranger things have happened!"

"I guess," Kurogane agreed. "One big difference, though."

"What?"

"You were a terrible student," Kurogane said, voice sharpened by remembered frustration and annoyance. "Even as a cover to get close to me and an excuse to spend time with me, you could have at least _tried_ to take my lessons seriously."

Fai pouted, fake exaggerated hurt for effect. "Maybe Kuro-teacher is just a terrible instructor," he said.

"I am _not._ I have other students, you know, and they turn out just fine." Kurogane frowned, reminded of Syaoran for the first time in days. He hoped the boy was all right; that the fighting had died down between Nihon and Ceres soon enough that he hadn't gotten hurt in the clash; hoped that his almost fanatical hatred of Ceres hadn't led him to do anything stupid after the armistice. Hoped that Syaoran had remembered all he taught him. "Mostly," he sighed.

"So when do you want to start?" Fai asked him, after another long stretch staring at the fire.

"First thing tomorrow morning," Kurogane said decisively. "It'll be a good way to pass the time while I'm getting my strength back up. Because as soon as I can ride again, we're going south."

"South?" Fai's eyes reflected startled dismay. "Why... south? Wouldn't you want to go east -- back to your own country?"

Behind the facade of calm, he was agitated; Kurogane could tell that he knew exactly what Kurogane had meant, but didn't want to admit it. "South," he said firmly. "We have a demon-master to kill."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You may have noticed that the season has rather suddenly become spring. That's my bad, really -- I've been attempting to keep track of a coherent timeline (and distance scale) for this series, but parts of it are a bit fuzzy. Going by my original schedule, this story should have started in the fall -- late september to early october -- and should just now be getting into mid-january, still solidly midwinter.   
> But, after thinking it over I realized it makes a lot more sense for this to be more like late winter or early spring. Very few people, even Ashura and his wizards, will wage war in the middle of winter; and the coming of spring makes more sense thematically with the birth of Kuro and Fai's romance and the end of the war. (Also, I started writing this in November, so fall and winter imagery was easy to come by -- but it's summer now! I have to think really hard to remember what winter was like!)   
> At some point I will go back and edit the timeline so that it becomes congruent with the new time frame, mostly by adding more weeks to the dead time spent in Ceres before Kurogane left and Nihon before Ceres attacked. But for the time being... it's early March in this chapter.


	18. Sharp Lessons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which they return to the valley of demons, and face what they find there.

The good weather held over the next few days, with the weak spring sunlight serving to at least take the chill out of the mountain meadow air. The tips of the trees were beginning to swell with green; not yet leaves, but the buds that would open into tiny green flowers, before the true leaves came out. The view of the valleys was spectacular, with the hills and ridges picked out in sharp contrast in shadows under the slanting morning light; down on the lowlands, the fog of a spring thaw hovered blue over the landscape. The dark smudges of smoke on the horizon were barely visible from here.

There was plenty to keep them occupied. Fai fretted over the problem of keeping Kurogane warm and fed; he'd been brought so low by the blood draining that he could easily get sick, and Fai had no healing magic. Food in the mountains was harder to find in the early spring than in the fall, but he threw himself into the problem enthusiastically; at least until Kurogane made a remark about Fai fattening him up to eat him.

It had been a joke, Fai knew that. Kurogane's sense of humor, when it finally did emerge, was gallows-dark. He'd tried to laugh it off, but Kurogane had sensed his upset, and quietly apologized.

The uncanny sensitivity between them now was its own problem. It didn't seem to bother Kurogane much, apart from that first panic over Fai finding out his true feelings. But then, Kurogane had always been up front about his emotions in the first place, not much interested in dissimulation. It was much harder for Fai, now that he couldn't cover himself with a laugh and a bright smile, and Kurogane took advantage of that ruthlessly.

The first morning after Kurogane awoke Fai had attempted to sneak away to a mountain stream outside the clearing in order to finish cleaning himself up, a task he'd put off for too long already. It was difficult enough to try to clean a wound on one's own face without use of a mirror; worse when every touch sent waves of sick agony through his head, leaving him shivering on the bank of the small stream and waiting for the vertigo to pass to try again. Only a few minutes into the task, Kurogane had appeared at his shoulder -- the first time he'd tried to follow Fai on his excursions outside the campsite. Fai hadn't even thought that Kurogane could walk yet.

Without a word Kurogane had dragged him back to their clearing and sat him before the fire, dipped gauze into a kettle of water he'd boiled and set aside to cool, and taken over cleaning out the wound for him. Fai was both humiliated and grateful; he knew exactly how ugly a task this must be, but Kurogane's hands never once faltered. Perhaps as a warrior he was used to dealing with ugly injuries; either way, he was practiced and gentle. Once it was finished he made a pad to fix over the wound, and wrapped a long strip of bandage around Fai's head to secure it into place, like an eyepatch. All in the same silence.

After that, he'd taken Fai's chin in his hand, tilted his face up, and kissed him. It was the first time Kurogane had ever initiated any of their kisses.

That was another thing to worry about, another thing he had to try not to think too much lest Kurogane pick up on it. Kurogane said he loved him, and as hard as that might be to believe, _he_ believed it; Fai could taste his sincerity. But he was becoming aware, from Kurogane's startled, hesitant responses, that Kurogane did not have very much experience in the field of love. Fai was beginning to suspect that he was not only Kurogane's first lover who was a man, but his first lover at all.

It was a heady thought. But that meant that Kurogane didn't really _know_ what he had offered, possibly didn't even know his own desires. Possibly that he didn't even know the difference between protectiveness and affection, and true desire. To be sure, they touched now, kisses and embraces that caused Fai's body to sing with need. But there was no spark of answering arousal from Kurogane's body. He was afraid of pushing Kurogane too fast, forcing him into something he wasn't ready for... but if not now, then when?

So he tried to keep his spirits up, think only of positive things, to keep from worrying Kurogane in turn. He threw himself into preparations for their journey wholeheartedly, and tried not to think of what lay at the end of it. Tried not to let the sick shivering fear creep up from his stomach and overtake him again, lest Kurogane think him a coward.

Not that Kurogane didn't already know Fai's reservations about this mad endeavor; they'd argued over that the first night.

"Why just the two of us?" Fai had pleaded. "You're injured, and I -- I'm not at my best right now, either. We know where he is now, and what he is; why can't we go and get reinforcements, and come back to face him when we're ready?"

Kurogane turned to meet his gaze, and he felt immediately weak, timid; but Kurogane's eyes were grave and thoughtful, not judging. "Think it through," Kurogane said quietly. "We know where he is _now,_ but he knows his cover's been blown. If we went back to our own countries -- however long that takes, especially with a war on, and _if_ we could convince them to come -- it could take weeks, even months. By the time we got back to his lair he could have set up a hundred different traps, or just up and moved entirely, started over somewhere else. We've got to move fast; we don't have much time.

"Besides," Kurogane admitted, some of that iron confidence diminishing. "I don't know what good it would do us to bring extra bodies to this fight. My countrymen... Any demon-hunter would come willingly enough, for a chance to strike at our greatest enemy, but... they're like me. Like I was. They don't know the first thing about magic, and they can't defend themselves against it."

He added after a moment, "I won't lie to you though; if you think some of _your_ countrymen could help, I wouldn't say no."

Fai laughed, a little bitterly. "I don't know that they _would._ Ashura refused, still refuses to see that the demons are a menace... and I doubt the others would be persuaded to betray him for my sake."

Quietly, Kurogane said, "They might, though. You won't know until you _ask."_

Grimacing, Fai looked away. "Maybe. Maybe not. It's a moot point, though... I can't reach them. Any of them -- not even Yukito. I've tried."

"You can't?" Kurogane looked confused. "Why not? Did you -- run out of power somehow, because of what you did with Tomoyo...?"

"It's not like that," Fai said. "If anything, speaking with Tomoyo proved to me that I -- that becoming a demon hasn't changed me so much that I can't use my powers any more. I'm reaching out to Ceres, but I'm receiving no answer... It's like they're not even there."

"They aren't in Ceres now, are they?" Kurogane said pragmatically. "What about further south -- near the front? They'd be there, wouldn't they?"

"I tried!" Fai said, letting his frustration show. "But none of them are as strong as Yukito -- and Yukito cannot leave Ceres, not for any reason. He _ought_ to still be in Ruval, but I'm finding _nothing,_ not even a trace!" He took a deep breath, trying to push his frustrated worry away. "I don't know what's happening in Ceres right now, but there's no help to be found there."

After a long moment, Kurogane gave a little shrug, not so much dismissing the problem as accepting it. "We're on our own, then," he said quietly.

"But what can we really hope to do against him, alone?" Fai protested. "He's proven he can overpower both of us easily."

Kurogane shook his head. "He's proven he can overpower either of us, _alone,"_ he said. "I think with us together, he won't find it so easy."

He'd sounded so sure, so confident, that Fai had to doubt his own doubt. It was true, the _geas_ was gone; but he'd lost half his magic. But with Kurogane by his side, maybe -- maybe...

***

Kurogane recovered from his depletion with a speed and resilience that left Fai somewhere between relieved and envious. He knew that Kurogane was not as well as he seemed, that even a little bit of exertion left him wheezing dangerously -- but short of sitting on him and tying him up, there was no way to keep him out of the saddle. At least they would have several more days of travel before they actually had to fight anything. Hopefully.

They traveled south in easy stages and stopped when the early spring light failed. During the evenings and for several hours after dark, Fai threw himself into runecasting. If they were really going to confront Seishirou at the center of his power, then this time Fai was going to go in prepared. There were wards to set, spells to ready, all the preparation done in advance to be released at a word or a command.

This did have the advantage of killing two birds with one stone, as it allowed him to start Kurogane's magical education _in media res,_ with an eminently practical demonstration. As he worked to prepare a spell, he would explain each step and component, what each of the sigils meant and how they combined to form words of power, the principles and laws that lay behind magic.

Teaching magic to Kurogane was alternately a delight, a headache, and an ulcer. Kurogane's mind was sharp and quick, and surprisingly flexible; he took to some of Fai's explanations right away, and had no trouble memorizing the list of runes Fai put before him. But he was also incredibly stubborn, and he approached the idea of magic with a set of preconceived notions that were wildly alien to anything Fai had encountered before. Fai frequently had to stifle incredulous laughter, when Kurogane came out with a particularly hare-brained idea of how he thought magic _should_ work -- and then insisted on _arguing_ with Fai about it.

"No, no, _no,_ " he was saying to Kurogane now, in the middle of a circle half-drawn in the dirt, faint blue glowing in the edges. "Your problem is that you keep thinking of knowledge and power as two separate things -- and things that only humans have. Knowledge _is_ power -- the words that define the world are what give it shape and meaning. Knowing the words means that you can change and rewrite them, and _that_ is the basis of magic. All things have knowledge, and so all things have power -- it's just a question of knowing how to _use_ your knowledge."

"Not _everything_ has knowledge," Kurogane argued back. "Men do, and maybe animals have a little -- but what about plants? Or rocks? A rock doesn't know anything."

"It knows how to be a rock," Fai retorted. "If it forgets how to be a rock, then it stops being one. If you know about rocks, and if you know the right words, then you can _make_ it forget that it is a rock, and the rock will turn into sand."

Kurogane opened his mouth to argue more, but then closed it and frowned. Fai was relieved that he wasn't being called on to demonstrate; there weren't any loose rocks in the clearing, and he'd hate to have to kill one of the trees. Encouraged that Kurogane seemed to be listening, he went on. "Everything that has knowledge, has magic. You're right that rocks don't know much; so they just have a kind of background level of magic, enough to interact with but not much else. Plants have more, and there's a lot of inherent magical power in plants. And humans have the most magic of all, because we can _know_ an incredible amount of things. Humans are the only creatures who can know about things other than ourselves, and that is why we have the most powerful magic in the world."

"That doesn't make any sense," Kurogane complained. "If that were true, then everyone in the world would be a wizard."

"In a sense, every human is." Kurogane made an exasperated sound, and Fai grinned. "No, really! Think about it. A farmer knows how to raise up plants from the ground, and tend to them, and harvest them and turn them into things we can eat, and that's its own kind of power. The smith who forged your swords, he knew how to take two kinds of elements and mix them with fire and turn them into something else, to shape and sculpt them to become amazingly strong and sharp. That's power too. The kind of power that you call magic is just another kind of knowledge, learning how to manipulate the intrinsic knowledge of the world. If they chose to study for long enough, any human in the world could do what we call wizardry -- although they might not be very good at it, the same way that not everyone is good at cooking. Or at swordfighting."

"This sounds like an awful lot word-chopping to me," Kurogane grumbled, and Fai laughed.

"See, you're getting the hang of it already!" Fai's smile faded, though, and he continued more quietly. "Why do you think that demons eat souls -- that Seishirou and his master seek them? Every human soul is immensely powerful whether they're a trained wizard or not -- a concentration of knowledge and willpower unlike any other natural thing. A human soul is the strongest source of magical energy in the world."

"Oh." Kurogane had looked daunted by that, and there was a moment of silence as they both digested the implications of this. At last he said, in a quiet voice, "We'd better kill him as soon as possible, then, hadn't we?"

"Yes," Fai agreed. He looked down at the half-drawn sigil. "So we'd better get back to work. This one here is the _than_ rune. It falls under the elements of wood with a secondary influence of metal, and by itself, it represents stability and a strong foundation. But when you combine it with a stronger metal rule like _ko,_ that gives it both strength and flexibility. The individual meanings of the runes are important, but their influence changes depending on how they're positioned in relation to each other -- "

He continued through the inscription, as he drew it, pointing out the various elements and how they came together. This one was meant as a ward for Kurogane; there was no way to get his heavy, laminated plate armor back before they faced Seishirou again, and Fai knew how uncomfortable it made Kurogane to be so vulnerable. This ward, when activated, would send a killing shock through anything that tried to cut into him. It wouldn't protect him as well as a real suit of armor would, but anything that bit him wouldn't bite him twice.

The stick he'd been using to draw in the dirt had gotten shorter and shorter over the course of the lesson, until finally it snapped again, leaving a ragged splinter in Fai's hand. He sighed, looking down at the rather ragged sigil traced in the dirt. "I miss my staff," he said ruefully.

Kurogane glanced up at him from studying the inscription. "That thing that got broken the first time I met you?"

Fai nodded. "It would make this much easier. It's not a requirement for casting by any means, but it is a useful channel -- like your swords are for you. After that one was broken, I never got a new one attuned to me."

"Why didn't you?" Kurogane asked, brows drawing down. Fai could follow his thoughts perfectly; if a wizard without his staff was like a warrior without his sword, then it was insane to walk around without one, and he ought to have re-armed himself as soon as possible.

Fai shrugged. "What with one thing and another, I just never got around to it... First I was on the sick list and wasn't supposed to use it, and then Ashura laid the geas on me, and I wouldn't have been able to use it..."

Kurogane made an angry, disgusted sound; reminded, perhaps, of his ongoing animosity with the King of Ceres. Despite himself, Fai hunched a little, as though Kurogane's dislike of Ashura were reflected on himself.

His easy, comfortable pleasure in talking about his favorite subject evaporated when his thoughts landed on Ashura. He'd been trying hard to keep his mind occupied on other things, but the man crept back insidiously. Thinking about Ashura, about going back and having to face him again, made him feel cold and sick inside. If he even could go back. He still heard Ashura's angry, scornful words in his mind: _Bring me allies to save my kingdom. If you can't even do that, don't bother to come back._

He knew perfectly well, on an intellectual level at least, that his failure to do so was not his fault. Seishirou would never have dealt fairly with Ceres, never allied with them in good faith, no matter who Ashura sent as an ambassador; even worse, another envoy might have been deceived by him, taken in by his glamour and affable charm until it was too late, doing untold harm towards Ceres. Seishirou was the enemy of Ceres, the enemy of all wizards, and destroying him was a service to his country.

He knew all that. But still... but still, it was just another in a long line of disasters, things he hadn't been able to do right. Not all of the disasters had been his fault, at least not directly, but they all added up after a while, didn't they? In the end, the only common factor of all the failures was him.

Kurogane turned his head to regard Fai with a narrow look. "You're thinking about him, aren't you," he said, a tinge of disbelief and outrage in his voice. "Ashura. You're feeling guilty because you couldn't do what he wanted."

Fai closed his mouth so fast he bit his tongue. After a moment, he said brightly, "You know, I think the next thing I need to teach you is some mental shielding and privacy techniques. It's something mages have to learn, too. They quickly discover that rummaging around in the thoughts of other people without their permission is a fast way to become _very unpopular."_

Kurogane ignored this distraction and bulled right on to the point. "How could you _possibly_ think that?" he demanded. "After he set you up for this-! And now you feel like _you_ have something to apologize for?"

"He didn't know this would happen," Fai said, avoiding Kurogane's eyes, rubbing his hands together nervously. "He suspected - we suspected - that the master of demons was dangerous... but we didn't know what they were like, not for sure."

"A man who creates and controls demons is not someone you want to take chances with!" Kurogane exclaimed. "The moment you turn your back on him, you'll find a dagger there!"

"I wasn't exaggerating when I told Tomoyo that he's desperate," Fai said. "He can destroy every fortification in northern Nihon, wipe out every soldier in your army, but without allies he cannot possibly hold what he wins, and he knows it. He hopes -- hoped -- that he could use the terror of the demons to keep the Nihon people in line, while he carved out a foothold in northern Nihon and rebuilt his army."

Kurogane's face had grown steadily more stony and angry, as Fai recited Ashura's ruthless plans for his country. "As if Amaterasu would ever have sat still for that," he muttered, striking one closed fist against the ground.

Fai shook his head, opened in his hands in a letting-go gesture. "It would never have worked. I know that. But Ashura still hoped that he could get what he needed, then double-cross the demon-maker before he betrayed us. He thought --" Fai took a deep breath. "He thought that the stakes were high enough to justify the risk, that it would be better to lose one person on a gamble than to lose the war. And of all his people, he always said I was his best weapon, his best tool. I was the logical choice to send. He couldn't afford to let sentiment cloud his judgment."

"I can't believe you're sitting here defending that bastard!" Kurogane fumed. "To use such filthy tactics -- if he valued you so much, then why send you on a suicide mission? If he needed your power, if you are indeed his best weapon, then why send you out hilt-bound? Where's the strategy in that?"

Fai bowed his head, and said in a small voice, "If I hadn't made him so angry --"

 _"Bullshit!"_ Unable to contain himself, Kurogane jumped to his feet and stalked away, kicking the remains of the branch hard enough that they spun out of sight beyond the briar hedge. For a few moments he stood with his back to Fai, swearing under his breath and making angry motions with his hands like he wanted to punch the air. At last he took a deep breath, his shoulders heaving and relaxing, and came back to where Fai sat, still stunned.

"Listen," he said in a voice of deliberate calm. "And don't interrupt. I know you think the world of Ashura, but he's just a man -- even if he is a king. Ashura made a mistake when he thought he could ally with that asshole Seishirou. It was an error -- he guessed, and he guessed wrong. Men make mistakes, even kings -- although kings usually don't have to suffer the consequences of their own mistakes; other people do in their place. Maybe that's necessary for a king to be bold enough to make the right decisions, I don't know.

"But you tell me that Ashura is such a great strategist that he doesn't let love get in the way, and then turn around and tell me in the same breath that he let anger cloud his judgment and ruin a critical mission? That makes him a bad father _and_ a bad king, as far as I'm concerned. It's good for a man to be loyal to his king, but what's it worth if his king isn't loyal to him in return?"

He reached out to Fai, forced him to look him in the eyes; his gaze was clear and determined, and furious. "Sending you out here with that geas on you wasn't just an error of judgment. It was _wrong._ It was petty, and spiteful, and cruel, and _stupid,_ and he should _never_ have done it. You haven't failed him, Fai. _He_ failed _you._ And you _know_ that."

Kurogane released him, and Fai wrapped his arms around his middle and hunched forward, staring at the ground, seeing nothing. Kurogane had a way of being so certain, so definite about what he believed, that it almost seemed like the universe changed to make what he believed the truth. And faced with such certainty, Fai couldn't help but believe in it too. He knew that Kurogane, at least, would never lie to him.

It didn't make it any easier, accepting that Ashura was to blame for what had happened to him, instead of himself. It didn't make it hurt any less to know that the man he'd loved so unstintingly for all of his life could betray him like this, or that the king he'd served so devotedly could fail him so. The pain was still real, raw and powerful, and he wasn't sure that it would ever go away.

But at least it was a different kind of pain, one that came from the outside, not from within; it didn't wind about his innermost soul and choke him in the same way as his decades-old sorrow and guilt. It didn't fill him with the same crippling sense of insecurity and self-doubt, constantly questioning himself, doubting himself. There was an honesty to it that was almost cleansing, as sharp and painful as it was.

"I know," he whispered.

Kurogane said nothing else, but rested a hand on Fai's shoulder, a point of grounding in a universe cracking apart. "I don't know how to help you," he admittedly quietly. For the first time Fai had ever known him, he sounded lost, uncertain. "I can feel how scared you are, and damned if you haven't got every right to be. I want to give you strength, to help you not be afraid. But I don't know how."

It made him sound -- and look -- much younger, and Fai was reminded again of the difference between their ages. Kurogane was always so confident, so sure, that he forgot how young he really was. Impulsively, he uncurled himself and turned to Kurogane and hugged him, then pulled him tight. "You are my strength," he whispered in Kurogane's ear. "For you, for Sakura, for Ceres, even for Ashura -- I will be strong. I'll do whatever I have to in order to protect the people I love."

Kurogane returned the embrace, but after a moment pushed them gently apart until he could make eye contact again. "You'll do it for us, but not for yourself?" he asked softly, and brushed his fingertips gently over the left side of Fai's face. "For all the people who love you in return?"

Fai shut his eye, and lowered his head, for a moment blocking out all sight of the world. Letting Kurogane be his strength.

"Just stay by me," he said, "and I'll be all right."

  
***

  
The angle from which they approached the valley of demons was not the same one that Kurogane had seen when he'd last come here what seemed like years ago -- but the view had completely changed. The elegant country manor that had been the centerpiece of the scene last time had morphed into a marble gazebo, standing in a clear field of brilliant tulips that seemed to glow with their own internal light. All variations on the same theme.

One new element had been added, though -- Kurogane rose in his stirrups to squint at it even as Fai muttered "What is that?"

It looked like a signboard of sorts, a wide wooden board nailed to a thick post. But what was on it was not words, but a dark irregular sprawled shape...

"I don't think we should take the horses any closer," Fai said numbly, and Kurogane nodded silent agreement, swinging down from his saddle with only a slight stumble.

They crept down the slope to the valley in the bright warmth of noon, which only gave a more nightmare feeling of unreality to the scene. The signboard wavered as if in a heat haze as they approached it, but by the time they reached the foot of the post it was all too clear what it was. Ginryuu -- he'd never expected to see his father's sword again -- was thrust deeply into the wooden board, impaled through the torso of a twisted, withered figure. Blood had run down the blade to stain the hilt, and smeared darkly over the signboard and post, but it had been out here long enough to dry in the sun.

"Well," Kurogane said in a flat, emotionless voice. "Guess this answers the question of whether he knew we were coming back."

Fai had turned his head to the side and closed his eyes as he took deep breaths, fighting off either horrified nausea or, worse, attraction to the liberally smeared blood. "It's not... a real child," he whispered distantly. "No matter what it looks like. It's just a construct made to resemble one."

"I don't care," Kurogane said in that same flat voice. "Whatever message he's trying to send here, I don't give a fuck. I'm just glad to have my sword back." He reached up to take hold of the hilt.

"Wait, no -- it could be a trap --" Fai said in alarm, moving to stop him -- but Kurogane's hand closed over the hilt, and nothing immediately struck him down. "Do you think he'd just _give_ you your weapon back?" Fai demanded.

"If it's a trap, we'll trigger it either now or later," Kurogane argued back, "and whatever it is, I'll be able to face it better with my sword in hand." The grisly construct's hanging arms flopped limply as he pulled his sword out, as if in a high wind, and he sighed in satisfaction as the weapon came loose in his hand --

And the world caught fire.

  
***

For a moment Kurogane was blinded, convinced he'd been transported back to Suwa, ten years before, on the night that the wards broke and Suwa burned. Waves of heat battered him from all sides, and the sky turned black with blowing cinders and choking smoke. Desperately he tried to shield his eyes with his free hand as a scorching wind blew past him, fanning the roaring flames to new heights and throwing choking, acrid smoke into his face. He doubled over, coughing.

Fai grabbed Kurogane's arm as he stumbled. "Don't panic!" he shouted, barely audible over the sound of the roaring flames. "It's an illusion. It's no more real than the flowers were."

"It _feels_ real!" Kurogane said, and swore as a piece of flaming debris fell with a crash near them. He could feel the heat scorching him, could smell his hair beginning to sizzle.

"A good illusion will. Keep breathing normally and don't cough! It's trying to trick you into suffocating yourself."

With some misgivings, Kurogane lifted his hand from his nose and tried a deep breath. His nose was flooded with the smell of searing smoke and his throat itched unbearably, but he did not choke. He set himself to ignore the distractions.

He strained to see through the smoke and ash, to blink clear his watering eyes. "How do we get through this?" he shouted back. He could see no trace of the white marble gazebo now.

For a moment there was no response, and he wasn't sure Fai even heard him. At last he heard his voice coming through the inferno. "We have to find the center. What's casting this illusion, and stop it."

"Not Seishirou himself?" Kurogane said. His throat was beginning to hurt, and he tried to ignore that too

"I don't think so..." Fai looked uncertain; he wiped his free hand over his eye, and Kurogane realized that his vision must be even more obscured than Kurogane's was right now. "This doesn't... It's a different feel to it, but I can't pin it down -- LOOK OUT!"

Motion, coming towards them fast from the side. Fai shoved Kurogane aside and turned to face it, holding up his hands as if to block it barehanded. Kurogane moved faster, ducking around Fai and slashing upwards from below in a fast, deadly slice. Something screeched, high and inhuman, and flopped in two pieces down to the ashes by their feet.

"That thing is real!" Kurogane prodded the wiggling things warily with his sword; his eyes watered even harder when he tried to get a good look at it. It was a blurry creation of ashes and sand, looking halfway between an imp and a lizard. "What the hell is it?"

Another screeching sound, almost too high-pitched to be audible, warned them of another such attack from the opposite side, and then another. Kurogane quickly turned and sliced one, while Fai took care of the other. "I don't know!" Fai called back. "It's coming from the same source as the illusions."

He couldn't see a _damn_ thing in here, and the infernal visions were just distracting him. Acting on impulse, Kurogane closed his eyes.

He'd noticed it the first time he'd been in the unreal garden, but had been unable to pin down the source of his unease. The illusions had no aura. All things had their own sense of presence, whether real or unreal, but these didn't. That was why he hadn't been able to sense the first attack until Fai had warned him.

He could sense Fai now, heated and blurry in his visions, and a very faint sense of small, half-living things coming at them. The things seemed to be attached to tethers, with the same half-alive aura, and if he followed those tethers back to the source...

He was moving before he realized it, leaving Fai shouting in alarm behind him. He heard flames roaring and felt searing heat envelop him as he walked directly into a wall of fire, but it did not burn him. The thing knew he was coming, it was trying to stop him -- Kurogane broke into a run, charging forward and swinging all his momentum into his sword. _"Hama ryuu-ou jin!"_

Real fire blasted real heat back into his face, and he heard something scream -- something not at all human. He opened his eyes to see the ruined landscape about him waver and melt away. Small objects pattered to the earth around them, as a shape writhing in the flames of Kurogane's attack slowly became visible.

It was a _sakura_ tree. A huge monster of a tree, its massive trunk knobbed and twisted with age, but not much taller than a house for all its immense girth. Huge roots ran out in ropey masses out from around its base, and long slender branches stretched out for dozens of yards in these directions. Attached to these slender, trailing tendrils were the same flopping, indistinct things that had attacked them before, now convulsing with the tree's branches in their death throes.

"That was a _tree_ doing all that?" Kurogane shook his head in disbelief as Fai staggered up.

"That's not a normal tree," Fai gasped. He seemed to have trouble catching his breath, even once the illusion of smoke was gone.

"I figured that. Normal trees don't sprout monster fruit that tries to eat you." He extended his arm cautiously towards it, but then snatched his hand back when one of the shaking, smoldering branches tried to lunge towards him.

"Not just a tree," Fai whispered. There was a sick horror in his voice as he looked at the thing, and he was almost green. "Seishirou did something to it; I don't know what. But he's been feeding it on human blood, the same as his demons." The thrashing of the tree was beginning to die down, and Fai actually reached out and laid a hand on one of the crumbling boles, then flinched back. "This is what's been draining the life from the land around here. All the plants within miles, dead... so that only this tree would flower and be beautiful."

Kurogane looked at it uneasily, disliking the thought of a plant that could _think,_ that could reach out and influence the world around it without even having to move.

But whatever it had been, it was dead now; and their real enemy lay beyond it. Kurogane walked forward, kicking aside charred branches and curdled leaves.

The center of the tree was hollow. Inside it, there was a steep, slimy stone staircase going down.

Kurogane looked over at Fai. "Well, this is it," he said.

***

Seishirou was waiting for them at the bottom of the stairs.

"Well," he said, smiling as he opened his arms in an expansive gesture. In one hand was a long, slender sword, gleaming black in the dim yellow light. "So the prodigals return. Welcome back. You know, somehow I really didn't think you would."

Kurogane's muscles tensed into a fighting posture, ready to close the intervening distance and end this in one blow. But Fai had gone ahead of him in the stairs and had stopped now, back wary and stiff, blocking Kurogane's movement. "Didn't you?" he said softly. "That little display you put up top seems to indicate that you were expecting us."

Seishirou chuckled, a pleasant, humorous sound. "I admit that I hoped!" he said. "But realistically, I didn't think you'd be so stupid."

Kurogane edged around Fai on the stairs, trying to get a clean line of sight. Fai grabbed his shoulder, squeezing restraint. _"Wait,"_ he said in a whisper that only seemed half-voice. _"Not yet. Keep him talking."_

"What for?" Kurogane hissed back. "Why do we want to hear anything he has to say? Just give me room to work."

 _"You'd be dead before you crossed the distance,"_ Fai stated with chilling certainty. " _Just wait. Try to draw him out, play his hand so we can counter it. Remember, we're on his ground here."_

Seishirou was still talking; the bastard really seemed to like the sound of his own voice, Kurogane had noticed. "Really, you had everything going your way," Seishirou said conversationally. "I'm not an arrogant man; I know when to admit I've made a mistake. You got away from me clean, and I never would have guessed that you could. You even managed to warn your queen whore about my little armada, and she and the Freak of Ceres between them managed to mount a defense faster than I ever thought possible. To have all that set up in advance -- how far back had you been planning to double-cross me, by the by?"

Real, furious anger edged his voice there, under the false veneer of civility; it had the promise of whips and bone saws behind it, and Kurogane's spine chilled just hearing it. Kurogane glanced over at Fai to see if this made any sense to him; but the wizard looked as confused as he did. _Keep talking, draw him out._ "Your attack failed, then," Kurogane challenged him. "You might as well just give up, and go back to your master with your tail between your legs!"

Seishirou shrugged, his anger subsided behind a disinterested facade again. "It's really no more than a minor inconvenience. With my guidance, all my pets have to do is swarm every blue and white human they see, and eventually sheer numbers will wear them down. It was a good try, but not good enough. But you, Kurogane -- you, Fai. You had _everything,_ and you decided to throw it all down the midden hole when you decided to come back here. Whatever were you thinking?"

"We were thinking that you need to die, for the sake of the world," Fai said. His voice was low and serious, determined in a way that Kurogane had never felt from him before. "Your monstrous creature is dead. Your master will not be coming to save you. And I have no geas on me now, Seishirou. You will be called to judgment, and no one will defend you -- you have no support, no allies."

Seishirou laughed, and when he lifted his face towards them, the glass of his spectacles reflected white light like a perfect mirror. "Oh, Fai!" he said, still laughing. "Don't you understand? You brought my allies _with_ you!"

Abruptly, Kurogane decided that he'd had enough of talking. Shouldering Fai aside, he raised ginryuu and leapt forward, sword arcing down in a savage slash. Smiling, Seishirou raised his own sword to block, and the sound of the crash echoed against the stone walls. "So obvious," Seishirou said. "So _easy."_

Up close, Kurogane got a better look at the black sword - it was not just steel painted black to prevent rusting, like he'd first thought. It was made of some black substance not like metal at all, that melted and flowed into an amorphuous shape. Horrified, he tried to yank his own blade free, but it was stuck like glue; and Seishirou's laughing voice filled his mind as the black slime flowed down over the hilt and touched his hand.

Shadows raced through his mind, clouding his thoughts, rendering his tongue dull and stupid, his limbs slow and heavy. _Kurogane, we_ are _the best of friends, aren't we?_ the shadows purred in his mind, seductive and irresistable. _You're_ mine.

Somewhere far in the distance, something was ringing, someone was shouting. He was aware of it, but it couldn't get through to him past the heavy veil of shadows. All that mattered in the world was the compelling voice -- his newest, his best friend. He wanted to nod his head, but couldn't seem to move. That was okay; the dark voice heard his intention, and laughed soundlessly inside his head. _Good. Good. I knew we would be; I knew you once before, and I knew that I could have you any time I chose._

Kurogane took a step, slow and heavy, pulling away from some clutching grasp. He raised his sword -- his father's sword, which he had somehow foolishly lost, but the kind man had given it back to him. _That's right, see how generous I am,_ the dark voice purred. _You're a demon hunter, isn't that right? You kill demons. Well, there is a demon behind you right now; so why don't you take that sword of yours, and cut his pretty head off._

 _"Yes..."_ Kurogane took another step, slowly turned, his sword arm seeking his target. _Yes... I am a demon killer..._ He was moving much too slowly; he'd never nail a moving target that way. He tensed, focusing his gaze on the pale, slender neck of his -- _Fai!_ \-- target. One quick horizontal cut... and his new friend would be happy...

Something grabbed his arm, pressing tight to his skin; white light blazed outwards, burning the shadows from his mind. In a moment of painful, searing clarity he was aware of himself again; standing halfway between Seishirou and Fai, turned to face his friend with his sword raised in the attack position, poised to strike.

Shock reverberated through him from what he had almost done; and in that moment, he felt Fai's true anger blaze through him like an avenging angel, Fai's fury over what Seishirou had just tried to do. _So he CAN get angry,_ Kurogane thought irrelevantly, feeling it for the first time; angry not for himself, but for wrongs done to those he loved. It was a feeling almost shocking in its elemental intensity, fury so pure and unchained that if unleashed, it would burn all in its path to vengeance.

Fai pulled him beside him again, and Kurogane went willingly, still trembling with horror at what had just happened, at the near miss. But Seishirou looked if anything even more shocked -- like the floor had dropped out from under him and dropped him into a pit. "How?" he said, and his urbane, cultured voice was hoarse with disbelief. "Half-crippled little hedge wizard -- he was _mine!_ There was no way you could have overcome my control!"

"Control?" Fai's voice was edged with contempt and disbelief. "Have you forgotten your own elementary principles? His blood runs strong in my veins right now, Seishirou -- there is _no_ way that you could keep him from me!"

Horrified comprehension dawned in Seishirou's face, and he began to back away, stumbling over his own steps on the polished floors. Distorted whorls of darkness seemed to follow his progress,and Kurogane felt Fai's suden flare of triumph. " _Now,"_ he hissed in Kurogane's ear, and together they moved forward.

Seishirou spread his hands as he charged forward, and patches of the stone floor suddenly began to writhe and bubble like pots of boiling water. Dark shapes heaved themselves out of the floor into the stone cavern, and a dozen pairs of lantern-yellow eyes turned on Kurogane from the shadows.

Seishirou flickered and vanished before Kurogane could reach him, reappearing a dozen yards away, and he was forced to divert himself to face the new threat. A small smile slipped into place on his face as he surveyed the distance, the angles, and switched into a low posture of defense. This, this was mere demon-slaying, and this was what he was _made_ for.

"Your own cruelty was your downfall, Seishirou," Fai called out, from the other side of Kurogane down the hall. Three of the demons lunged at him at once, and he dodged aside; two of them tangled with each other, and he parried the third, plunging his blade deep into its staring eye socket. It shrieked and fell, its own death throes fouling the efforts of the demons around it, as he whirled to face the next attack. "You had us -- you had _both_ of us in your power, at your mercy. You could have killed us both then, you _should_ have killed us then, any way you chose to."

The floor under Kurogane's feet began to writhe and smoke, turning hot and gluey under his feet; a sharp, indistinguishable command from Fai, and it snapped back into place again. Kurogane jumped as a long, low demon with a snakelike neck came at him, leapt over its head and decapitated the thing with a brutal downwards slash. He ran for the wall, turning to put his back to it and brace himself to take the charge of the next demon standing. Briefly, the lights around them flickered out, but then they snapped back on and held steady.

"But instead, you decided to get _fancy,"_ Fai hissed, his voice dropping dangerously on the word. As he battled the demons, Kurogane was advancing slowly but steadily down the hall, and Fai was keeping pace with him, shimmering in a blue haze of spell and counterspell. "You decided you could have it all, and you tried to use us against each other. And that was your mistake. You should never have let us see each other, let alone touch each other. You cannot best Kurogane in swordplay; you cannot best me in magic. We are stronger together than either of us would be alone, and together, we will destroy you!"

"How sickening," Seishirou's voice snarled from the shadows of the far wall. "Then die, little lovebirds -- together!"

A buzzing sound filled the air; that was Kurogane's only warning before one of the demons slowly advancing on him suddenly stopped and swelled grotesquely, limbs twitching spasmodically -- and then the black flesh burst, and the underground chamber was filled with the swarm.

Tiny, insectlike vermin filled the air until Kurogane was blinded; he had to shut his eyes before they could fly in and latch onto them. He could feel thousands of hungry, voracious mouths pour across his skin, tiny serrated fangs seeking to bite -- but an equal number of blue flashes played over his skin, destroying every one that set teeth to him. They could not get through Fai's ward, but he dared not open his eyes or his mouth; he clapped his left hand across his nose and mouth to protect them from the binding swarm.

Fai called out a word, and a blinding arc of blue-white flashed through the room, incinerating the swarm in the blink of an eye. Thunder clapped and rumbled, almost deafening them. Without even opening his eyes, Kurogane sensed the next demon and slashed out to meet it, feeling his father's sword bite deep into corrupted flesh and grate against splintered bone.

Four demons left, and Seishirou up to Gods knew what tricks in the corner -- but despite the surroundings, despite the odds, he was not afraid. He could take on any demon born, and he trusted Fai to defend him from any more arcane attacks. "I'll finish up here," he told Fai, his sword flashing out in quick, punishing arcs to keep the remaining four creatures wary. "Take him!"

"No!" Seishirou cried, a sound so humanly afraid that Kurogane actually pulled his eyes away from his opponent to track him. And so he was looking right at Seishirou when the master of demons made a sign in the air, and vanished.

Fai gasped, and drew furiously on the air surrounding him with glowing blue lines; in a moment, he too had vanished. Leaving Kurogane alone in the demon-maker's crypt with four hungry abominations.

"What the hell is going on, wizard?" he called out, even as he dodged and feinted out of one demon's line of sight, lunged forward to deliver a killing thrust between its wide, pulsing ribs. Took a hit to his side that he couldn't avoid as payment for that kill, felt the shock of it travel through his body and pain blossom in his side. "Fai!"

It all devolved into a desperate flurry of sword blows against demon pincers, razored claws stinking with their own filth and a rattling stinger that dripped a vile liquid. He fought desperately, afraid that at any minute Seishirou would return and he would have to face him as well as the demons. But at last he stood panting in a circle of twitching carcasses, severed limbs leaving fluid and a wide spatter of gore. Panting, limping and bleeding from a dozen places, but still standing.

There was still no sign of Seishirou, nor Fai. Frantic, Kurogane turned to the spot on the far wall where Seishirou had been standing, searching for some hidden egress that he could use to follow them. There was nothing there, of course. Kurogane began to panic; to come all this way, through all these horrors only to have his prey give him the slip at the end of the chase, escape through some knothole he could not even see. Or even worse, that he should vanish and take Fai with him, dragging the man off to some worse chamber of horrors where Kurogane could never follow, never rescue him. " _Fai!"_

 _"I'm all right!"_ Fai's familiar voice rippled across his mind, not heard with his ears at all, strangely distorted for all that. _"He tried to escape by going out of phase! I've blocked him, and he knows he can't beat me here. He's going to try to double back to where you are, so be ready!"_

"Be ready for what?" Kurogane shouted into the empty chamber, but there was no answer from the stinking, sticky stone.

Heart pounding, Kurogane moved into the center of the chamber, equal space all around him and equal distance to any wall. He was not completely recovered and his body knew it; he could feel the dizziness, the faint roaring in his ears that threatened another blackout spell. Most of all he could not afford to lose any more blood, but blood was slowly dripping from slashes on his arm and his side that he could not stop to staunch.

Black clouds threatened his vision, and Kurogane went down on one knee, holding Ginryuu in front of him with both hands, blade downwards, point resting on the ground. He lowered his forehead to the dragon on the crossguard of the blade, and closed his eyes. Took a deep breath, and held it.

In the silent chamber, his heartbeat thudded, once, twice, again. He released the breath, slowly, slowly, until all trembling in his limbs stilled, and the tension in his frame drained away. _Listened._

For a long moment, the only sound was the slow dripping of blood.

And in one swift motion, he raised his head and brought his arms back and across. The blade of the dragon sword snapped out behind him, emerging from between his torso and his right arm; the point angled upwards to thrust deeply into the torso of the Master of Demons, who had materialized silently behind him with one arm raised to strike. The sound of a black sword-hilt clattering to the stones was very loud in the silence.

Fai shimmered and reappeared moments later, as Kurogane stood and turned around, facing his opponent full-on. Seishirou gasped and choked, reaching with trembling hands for the sword buried in his entrails. His blood was red, which startled Kurogane; he'd expected it to be black, like the demons.

"Well, what do you think?" Kurogane growled, as the blade twisted in his enemy's gut. "He's not dead yet. We could see how many parts of his we could remove, and still keep him alive. It wouldn't even start to be payment, for everything he's done."

"No," Fai said, and his voice was faint, his expression sickened. He avoided looking at Seishirou's face. "Just end it. Get rid of him."

Kurogane glanced back at his companion, and nodded once. Turned back to face Seishirou with an expression made of granite, and pulled out his sword.

Seishirou fell to his knees, his crimson-streaked hands clutching helplessly at the wound in his gut. He looked up at Kurogane and drew a bubbling breath, and then smiled, a ghastly, ghouls-head grin. He seemed about to speak one last time, when Ginryuu's flashing blade cut around and took off his head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter where real science conflicts with the necessity of plot, alas. Severe hypovolemic shock like what Kurogane experienced takes weeks, not days, to recover from -- unless you're given transfusions to replace the lost blood, an advantage Kurogane definitely does not have. He definitely should not be back in fighting form in under a week like what is shown here -- but oh well. I didn't think to check on the medical facts until after most of this chapter had already been written, by which time it wouldn't really make sense to change it. Um, a wizard did it?


	19. Aftershocks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kurogane and Fai survey the spoils of their triumph, and discuss where to go from here.

The fight against the Demon Master had taken only minutes, long as they had stretched. The clean-up afterwards, however, took hours.

Seishirou's underground lair was extensive, and not all of it had been devoted to his workshop and holding cells. There were also living quarters, a library of sorts, and other laboratories filled with equipment or work in progress that Kurogane could only begin to identify; he recognized enough of the items and runes that Fai had begun to teach him to know that it was magic, but not enough to discern their meanings. And then there were the _oni_ themselves.

By mutual unspoken agreement, they divided the labor. Fai was soon absorbed by the library and laboratory, rifling through books and materials and sorting them into piles of various sizes on the workshop floors. ("One to take with us, Kuro-chan," he'd explained cheerfully, pointing to the smaller pile; then, to the larger, "And one to burn.") Kurogane, himself, went through the living chambers and found himself going through Seishirou's personal effects.

There was not much in the way of money, or treasure; apparently Seishirou was not very interested in such things. He did find Souhi, and was glad to get her back, long-time companion to his father's sword as she had been. He found part of his armor, although it was so crumpled and damaged - he didn't even want to think about what sort of forces could have done that - as to be completely unwearable. If not for the prohibitive expensive of iron in Nihon, he'd just leave it behind; as it was, it would have to be melted down completely and reforged.

He found a number of other swords and weapons, all of Nihon manufacture; although he did not recognize the maker's marks on them, it seemed plain enough that they were also various trophies from slain demon-hunters. He even found his _tantou_ , which he had given to Fai outside the battlefield in Ceres and never seen again. The thought that Fai had carried it with him on his disastrous embassy was strangely warming.

There were also closets overflowing with an extensive cache of luxurious clothing, perhaps the vain wizard's one self-indulgence. Kurogane took a long time going through these, looking over every piece carefully. Underneath a pile of heavy velvet robes, towards the floor of the wardrobe, he found a delicate-looking silver box. Jewelry? Had Seishirou collected female victims, as well? He reached down to pick it up, but immediately dropped it when a shock went through his hand, like the box itself had bitten him.

 _What the hell?_ Despite the lingering ache in his palm, there was something... Carefully, using folds of heavy silk to protect his hands, he picked it up and pulled it out of the closet, depositing it on a wooden desk strewn with papers. With some trepidation, he reached out and pushed back the lid.

And quickly stood back, raising his hands and letting the lid fall. The ends of his fingers still tingled fiercely, enough that he half expected to see them glowing. "Wizard," he called out, raising his voice to carry to the next chamber. "You'd better come see this."

"Not right now," Fai's voice floated back; he sounded preoccupied. "I'm trying to figure out where all these linkages go."

"I think you'd better come see this _right now."_

There was a long pause, and then a series of scraping and thumping noises, which heralded Fai's appearance in the doorway. "What is it?" he asked, coming across the room. Then his eyes caught on the box on the desk, and he froze. "Oh..."

"This is yours," Kurogane said quietly. "Isn't it? It _feels_ like you."

With trembling hands, Fai reached out and lifted the silver lid again. The blue-white glow from within lit up his neck and face; light so pale ought to have washed him out and made him look sickly, but instead it seemed to imbue him with an ethereal radiance. "How..." Fai breathed. "Why is this here?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Kurogane said.

Fai shook his head. "No, I mean -- why is it _still_ here? Seishirou said, he said... he was gathering souls for his master, channeling all the power he harvested to him. The next room is full of channel linkages to funnel that power to the end destination. That was the whole _point_ of all this. So why -- why did he keep this? Why didn't he..."

"Maybe he was planning something else with it," Kurogane suggested. "Some kind of wizard-demon. Or maybe he wanted to keep it all for himself, maybe he planned to set himself up against his own master. Does it really matter why? This is _yours._ Take it."

"But..." Fai reached a hesitant hand out towards the sparking white surface. Like mist rising from the surface of a river, it curled up towards his hand, then fell back. "I'm not sure if I can. Or even if I _should._ What if he's done something to it?"

Kurogane tore his eyes away from the entrancing glow and glanced at Fai. He looked frightened and uncertain, but filled with a terrible hope. "You'd be a better one to judge that than I would. I don't smell anything of Seishirou on this. But you should think about this. He took your eye from you, and you won't be getting that back. He made you into what you are now, and I have no idea if there's any way to go back to being a normal man again. But he took your magic away from you, too. If you have any chance of getting it back, you should take it."

After a long moment, Fai nodded. He closed his eye and placed both hands in the box, in the writhing mass of light. For a moment nothing seemed to happen, but then the glow began to spread up his hands to his wrists. It spread _inside_ his skin, lighting up his veins from within as it crept upwards to his heart, and Kurogane looked away, unnerved.

Fai tipped his head back as the eldritch light wormed through the vessels of his throat, and a small gasp escaped him; then at once it was done, and the box was merely an empty, tarnished silver jewelry box.

"You all right?" Kurogane asked quietly.

Fai opened his eye, and Kurogane's heart jumped as he saw it shining bright blue. But when Fai tilted his head forward again, the tears pooled and fell down his cheek, leaving a trail of blue-silver sparkles in its wake, and the color of his eye remained demon-gold. A second bright tear made a parallel track down the other side of his face, from under the bandage covering the empty socket. "I'm all right. Just a... strange feeling." He reached up to swipe his sleeve over his face, and gave an embarrassed chuckle. "Oh, sorry. Whatever must Kuro-pon think of me, getting all weepy over this."

"Don't be ridiculous." Kurogane said, somewhat uncomfortably. The light was quickly fading as the wet trails dried, and had faded from under his skin, but the memory of it was still unnerving.

"Well, then." Fai's shoulders straightened, and he lifted his head high. "Perhaps we'd better get back to work."

There were also Seishirou's experiments to be disposed of. Some of them, animals waiting to be used in experiments or only barely touched, could be released back into the wild; Fai took over the job of coaxing the angry and terrified animals out of their cages and back into the free air. Others had already begun their terrible metamorphosis; for them, a quick end to their suffering was the only mercy.

Fai did not return to the workshop when Kurogane started dispatching the remaining _oni_ ; Kurogane was not surprised. It would be cruel to ask Fai to return to those dark pits where he had suffered so horribly. Instead, he went to each one in turn, methodically dispatching each creature with his sword. Trapped in their narrow stone holes, there was little danger -- even Kurogane felt a slightly sour taste at dispatching such helpless, trapped enemies like cattle at a slaughterhouse. But it had to be done.

There were enough pits to house hundreds of creatures; now, however, a bare few dozen remained, and the thought of what havoc those _oni_ could now be wreaking on his home country made Kurogane itch to be finished and away. By the time he finished the last row, exhausted, filthy, and aching, Fai still had not returned.

Kurogane went to look for him outside. It was late afternoon, and the sun was already beginning to slant behind the higher western hills, giving an orange glow over the Valley of Demons. The ground was strewn with ashes and cinders of the destroyed tree, still slightly warm when crunched underfoot; a brisk breeze whipped the ashes into Kurogane's face, stinging his eyes.

Now that the illusion was dispelled, he could clearly see the terrain for what it was; hard-packed dull grey earth interspersed with broken stone, slashed by pits and trenches. Gaping stone mouths in the steep slope to the east probably led into the demon pits, although he had no particular desire to go and check it. While disposing of the captive monsters he'd taken a hit to his left arm that hurt like hell, and had trouble moving that arm around much.

Fai was about a hundred paces away, at the edge of the broad stretch of level ground that more or less marked the border of Seishirou's lair. The magician was crouched down, intent on the ground at his feet, but he looked up as Kurogane approached. "All finished?" he asked somberly.

Kurogane gave him a short nod. "What are you doing here?" he said. "If it's all the same to you, I don't want to spend any more time looking at this hellhole than I have to."

"I was just making some preparations of my own." Fai stood up and brushed his hands across his thighs, shedding ashes and dust from it. "Why don't you go and get the horses, and load them up here to go?"

"You want me to carry all those books you picked out?" Kurogane demanded. "Do your own heavy lifting!"

Fai gave him an impish smile, and as he breezed by him he gave him a quick peck on the cheek. "But I have big, strong, manly Kuro-pon to carry things for me," he cooed. "I'm almost finished here. I just have a few more to do, then we can leave."

Grumbling slightly, Kurogane made two more trips into the underground workshop to carry back the things they'd decided to take away with them; the stolen weapons, Seishirou's amulet -- Kurogane figured his head would be more of a pain to carry -- and the books that Fai had picked out, as well as a few other small pieces of equipment from his laboratory that Kurogane didn't even know the purpose of. Fortunately they were traveling light, or the horses might have complained at the sudden overburdening.

Fai had moved from one point on the perimeter to another as Kurogane worked, apparently marking points on an invisible line with some sort of sigil. He'd looked at it, but not recognizing any of the runes in its makeup, left the magician to his work. Now, as Kurogane stood impatiently by the horses and tried not to lean too heavily on his horse's bridle, Fai came to his feet and headed over towards him.

"All finished?" Kurogane asked him in return, and Fai nodded.

"Just a few precautions," he said, as he saddled his own horse. "There are some very dangerous things downstairs, and I didn't quite think it was all right to just leave them there for anyone to find if they happened to wander in this way. It could be quite a lot of trouble."

"Huh," Kurogane said. He wondered if Fai meant trouble for that unwitting traveler, or trouble for everyone else if they got hold of Seishirou's research. Or both.

"You know, in his own way, he was a genius," Fai was saying, sounding almost wistful, almost regretful. "If he hadn't been so twisted, he could have made wonderful contributions to the world. I wonder where he came from originally... what his story was."

Kurogane gave him a sarcastic look. Who the hell cared, as long as he was gone now? "Well, if you'd like, I can go and get his head and bring it up here, and you can ask him."

"It would be pretty risky," Fai said seriously. "Trying to raise a spirit so soon after death has the possibility of infecting you with their death energy, and even if I could get hold of him, he probably wouldn't be any more helpful dead than he was alive."

"...That was a joke, wizard."

"Oh. Oh, right. Sorry."

With some relief, they turned their horses away and led them at a walk up the slope to the east. When they crested the ridge, Fai reined his horse around; Kurogane glanced behind him and also pulled to a stop. "What is it?" he asked.

Fai was looking out over the valley, an open, blackened sore on the landscape, stripped of all illusions or defenses. He raised both hands in the air, and Kurogane saw a glowing sign appear in the ashes of the valley floor -- then another, and another, appearing in sequence in a perimeter around Seishirou's lair.

 _"Reth,"_ Fai said softly, and with a start Kurogane recognized the word; it was one of the command words for _burn._

A huge, rushing wind seemed to roar past them; the lights on the valley for flared into sudden brightness, streaming in the high wind to join into a single unbroken circle of light. Within that circle, the blackened husk of the monstrous tree began to glow; first red, then yellow. Then, in an explosion of heat and light that nearly blinded him and caused his horse to shy and whinny in panic, the valley floor caught fire.

Fai turned to look at him, streams of pale hair whipping in the hot valley wind below. "We should probably go now, Kuro-sama," he said, and he had to shout to make himself heard over the noise of the flames.

His horse was more than willing enough to surge away from the sudden inferno; in fact it was all Kurogane could do to hold him to a trot, down the barren, broken slope, and not a full-out gallop that would probably break its leg. _What the hell did you do_ seemed like a redundant question, given the circumstances; instead, he reined his horse in until he was riding level with Fai, and shouted to him: "Are you sure that was a good idea?"

"It was necessary, Kuro-chan," Fai called back over his shoulder. "Don't worry. The cleansing fire itself will be limited to the circle I cast."

Kurogane glanced around them incredulously. These slopes were still littered with dry, dead tree husks, the floor underfoot crunching with dead leaves and brambles. "Limited? You think so?"

"Well, the _spell_ fire will be. Ordinary fire is another matter. All things considered, it would probably be a good idea for us to get away from here." Fai grinned at him, then spurred his horse on ahead.

The image of the streaming ring of light, the sudden explosion of flames, kept replaying in Kurogane's mind as he followed Fai down the hillside. This was the first time, he realized, that he'd seen Fai at perform magic at full strength. Always before he had been restrained; either injured and weak, or dissembling, or pulling his punches, or fettered. But Fai was free of the geas and restored of whatever magics Seishirou had robbed from him; he was now at the top of his powers.

As Kurogane rode away from the conflagration behind him, for the first time he began to wonder what the hell he'd gotten himself into.

  
They rode hard through the afternoon hours, putting as much distance as possible between them and the burning valley. They picked their way over the dry and broken ground and through the dry husks of the dead trees, until night began to fall in a soft blue-grey haze and it was no longer safe to continue. Even when the last of the daylight faded, it still wasn't completely dark; a towering orange light from behind them underlit the overcast sky and reflected off the glowing column of smoke.

Occasional breezes blowing towards them were unnaturally warm and carried the smell of smoke, but not the dry hot winds that would preface a wildfire. They found a riverbed with some water still trickling through it and secured their uneasy horses to a nearby snag, and settled down for the night. In that warm, eerie red light, surrounded by dead trees, neither of them particularly felt like risking a campfire.

Fai was inclined to fuss over Kurogane's new injuries, and Kurogane was inclined to let him. After a victory like this one he knew he ought to be proud and triumphant, but the letdown that came after the rush of battle and the thrill of victory left him feeling rather depressed and aching, all the bruises and hurts he'd sustained during the fight coming back to him. His left arm was either sprained or fractured, and they both agreed that the best course of action was just to support it with a sling and strain it as little as possible for the next few days. Once they'd cleaned and bandaged his injuries and Fai had fed him enough dried and leftover food to his satisfaction, they fell to talking.

"We ought to get back to Nihon as soon as possible," Kurogane said. "Tomoyo had warning, but I don't know what sort of defense she'd be able to mount in such little time..." Despite the urgency in the situation, his voice was tired; _he_ was tired. To bring warning to Nihon before it was too late, to track down and kill the enemy that had plagued him for so long... that had taken nearly everything he had. He could do nothing more tonight.

"Seishirou said she did," Fai reminded him. "That she and someone from Ceres had managed to work together to put up some kind of defense. I don't know what's going on in Ceres, but he certainly seemed to think someone from there was helping her."

"We're supposed to take his word on anything?" Kurogane made a sound of disgust in his throat. "Anyway, we know his creatures didn't all just curl up and die when he did -- the ones in the lab didn't, anyway. Whatever ones he created and sent out before are still out there, and they need to be hunted down and killed."

"And what about after that?" Fai asked him. The question had a teasing tone, but this being Fai, that didn't mean he wasn't also serious. "When all the demons are killed, and no more new ones will be created. What will you do once you've put yourself out of a job?"

Teasing or not, the question sent a cold shock over Kurogane. All his childhood he'd been trained to follow in his parents' footsteps as stewards of Suwa, but that would never be, now; all his adult life he'd trained and worked towards killing the _oni_. What would he do, when that central pillar of his life was removed? Who was Kurogane Demon-Queller without any demons left to fight?

Kurogane looked over at his companion. Fai's features were already losing definition, a pale red-tinted blur in the shadows. But his weight, leaning against Kurogane's good arm, was heavy and real. "I don't know," he said at last. "I think it's too early to call it done, anyway. Don't get me wrong, it's good that we killed Seishirou -- he's been our enemy for far too long. But we don't know that more demons will never be created -- after all, that guy wasn't acting alone."

"You're talking about Seishirou's master?" Fai said softly. "He mentioned one to me during -- a few times, but he never said his name. I know that he exists, and that Seishirou was sending power to him for some purpose. I don't know any more than that."

"Yeah. He exists." Kurogane reached into his hip pouch -- the place he'd always carried his _oni_ trophies as proof of a kill -- and pulled out Seishirou's amulet, holding it up to the smoke-stained sky. Where the gold of the bat design caught the fiery light it glowed red, like the amulet had been dipped in blood. "That guy was wearing this, but it wasn't his sigil to begin with. I searched his entire lair and I never found the sword with the bat hilt; and I never found the robe with that design on its sleeves, either."

The image of that sword flashed across his memory again. He'd only seen it for a few seconds, on that terrible night, but that had been enough to sear every detail of that sword, of that arm, into his memory forever. "It wasn't him. It wasn't the same man." His hand clenched around the amulet, feeling the jagged edges dig painfully into his palm. "He's still out there, somewhere, _laughing_ \--"

Fai's hand covered his on the amulet; gentle, exerting no force, but his intention was plain. Grudgingly, Kurogane relaxed his hold on the amulet, let it fall on its chain.

"I saw him, you know," he said lowly. "Seishirou's master, the one who planned all this. I didn't see his face, but I saw him. On that night -- on that night, I was with my mother in the shrine. She wasn't well -- she had been sick for a long time -- but because my father had gone out to fight she sat up in the shrine anyway, doing the rituals to strengthen the border wards. There was a noise from outside, like something crashing, and someone screamed... I went to the door to see what it was and when I turned back, there was this... hole in the air, over the altar..."

He turned his head sharply towards Fai. "You saw too, didn't you? When you were -- feeding from me -- I saw some of your memories. You must have seen mine."

"I saw some things," Fai said quietly. "I don't understand all of what I saw."

"I didn't understand what I saw then, either," Kurogane said. "But I think I'm starting to now. It was a portal. I recognized the look of it, when you cast that spell to get us out of the dungeon. It was a portal from somewhere else to my mother's shrine, and _someone_ was reaching through it. He had a sword, and he'd thrust it right into her -- I could see the blade coming out of her back, towards me. I was there -- in the very same room -- but I couldn't do _anything..._ All our defenses, all our walls and wards, and he just reached right into the heart of our home, into our shrine and snuffed her out, like she was --"

His voice broke; that surprised him. His parents' death had been years ago, and he'd thought on it long enough, often enough that time and exposure had worn away the first flush of grief. He could think of his father's death, his mother's murder, his home's destruction now calmly, with barely a touch of distantly-kindled rage. He'd thought he had come to terms with it long ago.

But now, as he took a breath and opened his mouth to give voice to these things, it was as if he'd lifted the stopper on a surge of grief that roared up from some deeply hidden place and swamped him. His throat tightened; his voice choked. He had to swallow hard before he could speak again.

"You know, I've never talked to anyone -- about this," he said, and it came out somewhat steadier. "Not even Tomoyo. When I woke up Shirasagi castle, she already knew. She'd seen. I never told anyone else."

Fai moved closer, an unpressing presence in the spring twilight. Just listening.

"I heard the screams from outside... I went outside, and Suwa was burning. The _oni_ were everywhere -- they came right through the walls, right through all our defenses, they tore everything apart. One of them came right towards me, and I saw -- it had Ginryuu, my father's sword. He would never have let go of that sword, not while he was alive."

He had to stop there, stop talking while he struggled to push the memories down, put them back in their box.

"So your father..." Fai said tentatively, his hand tightening on Kurogane's arm. "What happened to him?"

"My father was killed by the _oni_ ," Kurogane said in a flat, matter-of-fact voice. "His soul was destroyed by them. He can never go on to the next life, now, he can never be reborn. That was why -- because that happened to him -- I always felt that... I was never afraid to suffer the same fate, myself."

"Because you felt you deserved the same fate as him?" Fai asked softly.

"No, not like that!" Kurogane sat up straight, stung by the implications. "It was more like -- he never balked at that fate, even though it would be the final death. If he didn't flinch from that death, then how could I, and still be a person that he would be proud of?"

Kurogane continued, struggling against his unsteady voice, against the insistent burning in his eyes. "I always wanted -- both of them -- to be proud of me. Sometimes I wonder -- I wonder if they would be."

After a moment of silence, Fai said tentatively, "I'm sure they would be proud of you, if they loved you. And -- if they loved you -- then surely they'd want you to be happy, as well... wouldn't they?"

It was the sort of shallow, meaningless platitude that people said at funerals, and Kurogane was about to bite Fai's head off for it; the only thing that stopped him was the hesitance, the uncertainty in his voice. Fai had never had parents who loved him; Fai honestly did not know.

"I guess so," Kurogane said, his voice strained. His throat was tight with too many feelings, his eyes burned. He didn't want to talk about this any more. Talking about it brought all the feelings back too strongly; words made it all real again. But the sorrow and loneliness ten years gone came boiling up in him now, too strong to push them back down again; and he burst out before he could stop himself, "But I'll never get to hear them say it."

He broke down then, and Fai reached out to pull him into his arms as he gasped and shuddered, trying to fight against the sobs that wanted to tear themselves free from his throat. _Never, never again... never see them again, never touch them again, never tell them I love them ever again..._

Fai held him without saying anything, his face buried in Fai's neck, the silky blond hair tickling at his nose. Fai was warm tonight, his heart beating steady and _alive._ He loved him and he was still here, still alive. Kurogane squeezed his eyes shut against traitorous tears and vowed to any gods listening that he would do anything, _anything_ it took to keep him so.

In time the shaking quieted, the spasms eased and he was able to take a breath again without it choking into sobs. His arms went around Fai in return, and the man willingly shifted around to accommodate the embrace. "They were amazing people," Fai said softly, reverently. "And they _would_ be proud to have you for a son."

"You never met them," Kurogane said; his voice was as rough and gravelly as though he'd just woken up after a long sleep. "How would you know."

"I met _you,"_ Fai said.

They lay together in the twilight, their soft breaths slowly coming into rhythm together. After a long time, under the burning sky, they slept.

Fai awoke with the dawn, light creeping into the sky and peeping through the trees at them. For the last several days they had travelled during the daylight hours and slept through the darkness, tangled together between a couple of shared blankets.

Kurogane still slept; Fai's movement hadn't disturbed him. The high spring morning was quiet and still, with no danger for miles in any direction, and the air was chilly enough that Fai wasn't in a hurry to get out in it. Instead he propped himself up on one elbow, half-draped over Kurogane's chest, and watched the light slowly creep over Kurogane's sleeping features. He looked very different when he was sleeping; the tension and focus that normally defined him eased away, leaving him looking even younger than his true age. There was a peacefulness on his sleeping face, and in his sleeping mind, that Fai didn't often see when he was awake.

The psychic bond that had formed after the blood feeding was finally beginning to fade over time -- Fai was simultaneously relieved, and perversely disappointed. It would be a relief to have his own mind to himself again, to not have to worry about Kurogane picking up on his every stray thought and emotion. At the same time, though, he would miss the intimacy of their shared bond. He hadn't been so close to another human being since -- he shied away from the thought, not wanting to ruin the peaceful morning with it, but then braced himself and faced it head on -- _since Fai._ Not since his brother's death.

Whether disturbed by Fai's restlessness or just from the increasing light, Kurogane's face scrunched up a bit as he drifted closer towards wakefulness. Fai smiled -- he really was so cute when he was first waking up, like a sleepy feline -- and leaned over to give him a kiss good morning.

Kurogane shifted, coming closer to alertness as Fai's mouth closed over his own; his eyes blinked open, then shut again against the bright reflected glare of the sunlight. He reached over with his free arm and pulled Fai more on top of him, arching his neck a little bit as he returned the kiss. Fai moved willingly enough, molding himself against Kurogane's warm body, and as his thigh pressed against Kurogane's groin he felt what he hadn't before; the twitch of a growing hardness against his thigh.

Fai's eyes flew open, and he pushed himself up on both arms to stare down at Kurogane's face with surprise and delight. "Kuro-chan?" he asked breathlessly.

"What?" Kurogane sounded downright disgruntled that Fai had moved away. It was harder to tell on someone of Kurogane's complexion, but it was flushed even darker than usual right now; Kurogane was blushing.

A slow grin began to spread across Fai's face, and he lowered himself back onto Kurogane's body, pressing his thigh up against Kurogane's groin just enough to make him grasp. "This is just the first time I've had a chance to meet _little_ Kuro, that's all!"

Kurogane groaned. "Don't you dare start giving _that_ nicknames too -- I mean it, I swear I'll kill you if you do," he grumbled.

Fai laughed. "If you insist, I won't," he said. He wriggled a little, thrilling in the feeling of their bodies together, feeling his own excitement growing. He rested his cheek against Kurogane's chest, hearing his heartbeat, and said in a quieter tone, "It's just that this is the first time, at all. I was wondering if you really... were attracted to men in that way." If he found Fai desirable at all; if he hadn't just mistaken pity and protectiveness for love.

Kurogane snorted; the sound reverberated through Fai's frame. "You've never been injured in battle, at least not badly enough to lose a lot of blood, have you?" he asked. Discomfort and embarrassment infused his tone as he continued, "I have a time or two before, and this always... it affects a lot of your body's functions. That particular one just won't work when you've lost a lot of blood, that's all. It's normal. It'll come back on its own eventually."

"I didn't realize." He hadn't considered that angle of it before. Kurogane was right; he'd never been physically injured, at least not badly enough to lose blood.

Kurogane took a deep breath and said, "And I had no idea that you were freaking out about it so much. So if that was something you were worried about, that I didn't want you, then stop thinking that right now. I've been -- thinking about you that way for months. When I was back in Japan, I kept having, having dreams about you. And I'd wake up. You know, wanting you."

Fai grinned, even though Kurogane couldn't see it. Kurogane was so cute when he was embarrassed. "What, you mean you were having _wet dreams_ about me? Why didn't you tell me about this before? Don't tell me Kuro-sexy is _shy!_ "

"I'm not shy!" Kurogane said, annoyed. "It's just -- not exactly something that comes up in normal conversation! And it's a hard thing to admit, that a grown man is having sex dreams like a teenager -- it's humiliating. A man doesn't talk about those things to someone else, all right?"

"Argh!" Fai thumped Kurogane's ribcage in exasperation, earning an 'ow' and a wince from him, and rolled away. He took a deep breath, then sat up and looked down at Kurogane seriously. "Maybe it's not something you'd bring up in casual conversation to a total stranger, but I'm _not_ a stranger. I'm not clairvoyant, and I don't always know what's going on with you, so you need to _tell_ me when it's something that's going to affect both of us! Don't go all macho and closed-mouth on me for something this important!"

Kurogane was avoiding his eyes, apparently looking very intently at the patch of sunlight climbing through the trees. "Sorry," he admitted quietly after a moment. "You always seem to know so much. I didn't really think you would need me to tell you anything."

"Flattering, but not true." Fai poked Kurogane in the side, then reached down and put his hand to the side of Kurogane's face, turning him to meet his gaze. "Here's the first rule of being in a close relationship with someone, especially if you intend to be their lover; there are certain things that they deserve to know, that they _need_ to know. Don't hold out on me for things like this."

Kurogane didn't respond, his eyes sliding away from Fai's as soon as he released him; Fai was struck by a sudden thought. " _Have_ you had a lover before?" he asked him. "I mean... the first time we met you said you didn't have a sweetheart back home, but just because you didn't have one then doesn't mean you've _never..._ "

"I've been _busy,_ okay?" Kurogane yelped, his persistent blush growing hotter. "I had other things on my mind -- like hunting _oni!_ I was only ever in the city a few days at a time, I never had time to pursue a woman for anything long-term. And without a meddling family to try to arrange a marriage for me early --"

"Oh..." Fai breathed, and he stopped Kurogane mid-rant with a gentle kiss. When he pulled away, his lips barely inches from Kurogane's, he whispered, "And has nobody ever made love to you before, my beautiful hunter?"

Kurogane's head fell back, and for a moment Fai thought his non-answer would be answer enough; but finally he grudgingly admitted. "Just a few times... with women. Just... just kissing. It never got very far..." He trailed off into embarrassment. "And it didn't seem -- being with women -- all that special, you know? Not enough for me to want to spend a lot of time and effort chasing after them, when I had other things to do."

" _Oh,"_ Fai said. A new fire seemed to kindle in his heart, spreading out through his veins and bringing his body alive. When he kissed Kurogane again it was no longer tender but hungry and devouring, grinding his whole body against Kurogane's and letting him feel his matching desire. He could _hear_ Kurogane's heartbeat quicken, feel the beat of his pulse through his lips; Kurogane arched up against him in response, clutching at him and pulling him down; but hesitant and unsure, so sweet. _To think that I would be so honored..._

When the kiss broke again Kurogane's breathing was as fast as if he'd been running, or fighting demons. "So... you don't... mind, then?" he asked breathlessly.

"Mind?" Fai asked, and a spark of mischief flared in him. "Only as much as this is a crime against humanity, if not against nature! The thought of someone like you going unappreciated for so long... If I didn't fix it as soon as possible, I'd never forgive myself. Kuro-sama, I want to love you... I want to show you -- if you'll let me...?" The itch to claim Kurogane right _now,_ to leave his mark on him and make him never want to leave Fai behind was very strong -- but some uncertainty still lingered.

Kurogane swallowed hard; Fai was entranced by the line of his throat as it moved. "Okay," he said, in a voice much higher-pitched than his usual one.

Permission granted. Delighted, Fai dove for the fastenings of Kurogane's clothes. Thank God he'd never gotten his armor back -- not that they could have had this morning rendezvous if he'd been wearing it. Instead, he was wearing a simple, undyed loose top that folded over his chest and tied on the side. Easy enough to push it aside, gain access to Kurogane's chest and skin, scratched up here and there with scars but still oh so delectable...

"Ah," Kurogane gasped as Fai's hands worried at his waistband, finding the loose dark pants more of a challenge than the top had been. A pang of worried apprehension shot through his emotions, strong enough for Fai to still his hands and lift his gaze to Kurogane's again. "What exactly is it that you're planning to do here? I don't... know much about how two men go about it, but one of them pretty much has to be the woman, don't they...? I'm not sure I want to..."

"No, no, no," Fai reassured him, planting his hands on either side of Kurogane's shoulders so that he could lean up and kiss him again. "Nothing like that, don't worry. We don't have to do anything you don't want to do. For right now, I just want to make you feel good." It did not suit Fai's purposes for Kurogane to think of sex as a waste of time. He wanted to blow Kurogane's mind, show him how good having a lover could be; show him that it _was_ worth the time out from chasing demons to enjoy himself. _I want to make you want me, now and forever._ As badly as he wanted Kurogane now, he could wait; there was no need to push Kurogane into anything too soon. _Especially_ not out in the middle of nowhere with nothing but a horse blanket for a bed and nothing to use as preparation at all.

"Okay..." Kurogane allowed him; he still sounded suspicious, but Fai supposed a paranoid demon-hunter always would be. He grinned to himself as he inched his way back down Kurogane's body towards his intended target; he would do his best to make sure that the ever-alert Kurogane forgot _all_ about his surroundings.

When he finally did get the troublesome pants out of the way, the sight of Kurogane's erection hard and needing was one of the most beautiful things he'd seen in quite some time. _He wants me. He really does!_ Wanting; and Fai bent his head down to answer that want with a will.

Working around the fangs was the greatest challenge; he did _not_ want to bring pain into this, did not want anything to spoil it. He had to be very careful, and move only slowly, but Kurogane seemed to appreciate it no less for all that. "Ah!" Kurogane tried to arch his hips up off the ground, but Fai braced himself with one hand on his hip and bore his weight down on him to hold him still.

Kurogane's hand came up, seeking wildly; Fai grabbed it with his own and held it tight, communicating so very much with his presence. He could _feel_ what Kurogane felt, faintly back through their bond, and the echoes made him feel a little drunk on sensation. And when Kurogane groaned "Ah, Gods," and then a few minutes later called out _"Fai,"_ with the same inflection, Fai felt himself full to bursting with delight.

When Kurogane came Fai kept swallowing, partly to draw it out as long as he could and partly to avoid the mess. When he pulled free and gasped for breath, the sight of Kurogane laid out before him -- skin bared to Fai's eyes, his expression open and purely astonished -- there was very little question of waiting.

He lay back down by Kurogane's side, listening to his breathing gradually slow. With some regret he reached over Kurogane's torso and pulled the edge of his top back over him, knowing that the cold air would be creeping back in. "Was that good?" he asked him softly, trying not to sound too anxious.

"That was..." Kurogane swallowed, then cleared his throat. "That was fucking incredible." His eyes slitted open, ruby gleams showing through. "Do you, uh... do you want me to... do that for you back?" The offer was hesitant but sincere, although Fai could hear an edge of trepidation creeping in.

He laughed, partly in delight and partly embarrassment. Speaking of things that men didn't like to talk about -- losing control and coming in one's own pants like an overexcited teenager was high on that list as well. "Mm, I think it's too late for that, Kuro-sama," he admitted, and pulled Kurogane's hand down towards his own waist; Kurogane let out a startled exclamation when he felt the sticky, cooling wetness. "Sorry. You just looked so sexy a few minutes ago that I just couldn't help myself."

"That's not right," Kurogane grumbled, and Fai couldn't help but chuckle at how quickly he'd managed to find something in the world to be grumpy over. "It should be... a mutual thing, shouldn't it? It's not fair for me to be the one just taking from you, when you don't get anything."

Fai smiled, and turned his head into Kurogane's neck. "Remember what you said to me a week ago, Kuro-sama?" he asked, his voice slightly muffled. "What I did just now, I did because I chose to of my own free will. I didn't do it with any expectation of a return, or to put you in debt to me. I _wanted_ to do it. That's all."

Slowly, Kurogane relaxed; despite his attempt to show willing, Fai could tell he was a little relieved. "All right," he said. "But some other time, I want to do that for you."

"No objections here!" Fai said cheerily. "There will be _lots_ of chances from here on out, after all."

"Already planning future assaults on my virtue, huh?" Kurogane growled. "Maybe I should start sleeping with my swords again." Despite the harsh words, his mind was open and warm, his expression narrowed in the way Fai was coming to learn was teasing for him.

"Kuro-sexy is so mean!" Fai cried, and followed this up by pouncing onto Kurogane's stomach. "He doesn't want me to have any fun _at all."_

"It's your idea of _fun_ that I don't trust," Kurogane retorted, and he twisted his hips to suddenly overturn them, pinning Fai beneath him and reversing the leverage.

From there on it devolved into pure wrestling, an exercise in play and delight; the sound of both their voices and laughter echoed from the rocky hillsides.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had not originally planned for this story to include sex. (In fact, when one of my ff.net readers asked me that question, I assured them it would not. Oops.) But during a conversation with my beta, who is not really in the fandom and has no particular interest in Kurogane and Fai as a pairing -- let alone in porn for its own sake -- she agreed that after all the development their romance had gone through, to end the story without SOME form of resolution in that area would feel cheap.


	20. Home Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which things end.

"How can you sit like that?"

Fai opened his eyes to see Kurogane staring at him with a mix of fascination and horror. He grinned. "It's good for concentration, Kuro-chan; and anyway, I don't see why you're complaining. It's not much different from the way _you_ sit."

"I don't sit with my legs folded on top of each other and my feet tucked in like that," Kurogane objected. "You're going to lose feeling in your legs if you sit like that for long. Are your joints made of rubber or something?"

"Practice, Kuro-sexy," Fai sang out. "Besides, it helps created a closed circuit of energy, which maintains the body while the spirit is away. Although you aren't completely wrong; the first time I went out on astral travel using this pose, when I tried to stand up afterwards I fell on my face."

"I'm still not sure this is a good idea," Kurogane grumbled, and Fai knew that he was not referring to Fai's balance. "It's been weeks since we had any news, and you still can't reach that pale guy no matter how hard you try. What makes you think this is going to go any better?"

"Yukito and I know each other well enough that this method of spiritual communication usually isn't necessary," Fai explained -- as he had several times before. "But even if I can't talk to him, I need to talk to _someone._ Something's wrong in Ceres, and I need to know what."

He knew Kurogane's concerns were more than just paranoia, but he said only, "That's why we're doing it _this_ way instead of traveling there in person. Now run along and stop distracting me. I'm trying to concentrate."

Kurogane shrugged and wandered away, footsteps crunching through last autumn's dead growth. His arm was out of the sling and back in use, although Fai still caught him favoring it every now and then; otherwise, he was steadily regaining his strength. Fai closed his eyes again and returned to his disrupted pattern of breathing, bringing his body into a holding pattern so that his spirit could free itself.

It wasn't that he didn't share Kurogane's anxieties; there was no obvious explanation for why Yukito should be out of contact for so long, but there were several unlikely possibilities, each less pleasant than the last. The last they'd heard, the war was going in Ceres' favor; but the tide could have abruptly reversed itself, the heart of Ceres itself could be devastated. Or even Yukito alone could be in danger; if their unknown enemy sought to foster chaos, there was no faster way to rip the heart out of Ceres' defenses than to target him.

Or -- more unsettling yet -- perhaps _he_ was the target, and Yukito was out of contact with him on Ashura's orders, for what purpose Fai dreaded to imagine. It was no secret that both he and Kurogane were in no good odor in their home countries these days; it was why they were reluctant to return directly home, lest they be further embroiled in this bitter war. Even an astral visit had risks, as Kurogane pointed out; but it was a risk they had to take. Seishirou's unknown master was still out there, a lingering menace that they could not ignore. Even with the demon master dead, Ceres and Nihon would never be truly out of danger until they found him and put a stop to his plans.

The problem was going to be _finding_ him. There was no reason to think he was close by to the valley of demons, or indeed anywhere in the west; a warlock in full mastery of his powers could literally be _anywhere_. Kurogane had no idea where to even start looking, and Fai had not been able to trace any magic from Seishirou's workshop to its destination. They might as well be looking for a needle in a haystack -- a haystack that could be thousands of miles away. They would get nowhere without more information.

He needed to talk to Yukito; the man was precognitive, and might have seen something or know something about their unseen opponent that they didn't. And so he determinedly put his doubts and worries out of his mind, and focused all his attention on separating his consciousness from his body. The physical world dropped out of focus as his attention shifted; and the astral plane wavered into place around him.

Travel in this state was a question of concentration, not distance or time; a matter of knowing where you were going and what you were searching for, as when he had entered Nihon to seek out the Tsukuyomi. Then he had needed Kurogane's guidance, his memories of the terrain in order to reach an unknown destination; but now his thoughts flew north like a homing pigeon, seeking out the familiar minds and vistas of his home country. And trying not to let his own apprehension at what he would find there poison him.

The palace at Ruval was strange and alien to him, full of shadows and blank spaces where his memories failed him and could not find a basis in reality. There! -- at last, after what seemed like endless searching through the empty hallways, he heard the whisper of a familiar mind calling to his; another mage, reaching out his own thoughts to form a bridge.

The other's image flowed into place as the connection was established, and he felt a moment's startled surprise -- the other was not Yukito, but Kazahaya, a younger wizard also skilled in mage talent. The boy was barely seventeen, and Fai had never spoken to him at length outside his training sessions; they had not otherwise had time to develop a close friendship. But at a time like this, anyone would do.

"Kazahaya?" he asked, when he had established a sufficient presence to speak. "What are you doing here? Where is Yukito?"

 _"Oh, lord Flowright, thank God it's you!"_ Kazahaya said almost at the same time. A wave of powerful relief accompanied the words, a common effect with mages not yet trained enough to separate rational thought from emotion -- or too strongly upset to control it. _"Where on earth have you been? Half the court thinks you're dead! The channels are in an unholy mess right now, and King Ashura is furious!"_

Fai overrode this spate of words with an effort. "I've been out of touch. I was captured, and only recently escaped. What's been _happening_ in Ceres? Why can't I reach Yukito -- did something happen to him?" Dread seeped into his own end of the connection, despite his best efforts to the contrary. Nothing _should_ have been able to harm Yukito, safe in Ruval, at the heart of all Ceres' network of protection spells and wards -- but then, hadn't Kurogane thought so too? _He reached through all our wards and our walls like they were nothing..._

 _"He's not here,"_ Kazahaya answered. _"He sent me back here to do what I could to keep everything together, and to be here in case you tried to contact him -- although I really didn't think that you would, you vanished without a trace, and what he expects me to do with this mess --"_

"What do you mean, he's not here?" Fai exclaimed. "Yukito can't leave Ruval, not for any reason. He's the focus of far too many spells that would collapse if he set foot outside the borders!"

 _"That's what I've been_ trying _to say,"_ Kazahaya complained. _"He_ did. _And they_ did. _We've lost communications to every one of our gramerhains, and the boundary spells are completely disintegrated, and the roads are --"_

 _"Why?"_ Fai demanded, somewhere between shock and horror. "Why would he do such a thing? Where did he have to go that was so urgent that he would rip out half our country's infrastructure like that?"

" _To Nihon,"_ Kazahaya said. _"That's what I've been trying to tell you, if you'd_ listen _. He went to Nihon, to try to hold back the demons -- him and all the rest of the wizards. He had another vision -- and I never would have thought the King would agree, but -- we went, anyway."_

A nagging, tickling feeling had begun to grow in the back of Fai's mind, like someone calling his name across a crowded room. "I think you'd better tell me what happened," he finally managed. "From the beginning."

The nagging sensation was growing worse, like buzz in his ear, or a burning itch. With difficulty, he managed to tear part of his attention away from his conversation with the young wizard to try and pin down the source.

 _His wards!_ Something had crossed them, and it was that feeling of disruption that had alerted him. He felt a momentary panic; he'd assured Kurogane that the wards would alert them well in advance of anyone approaching their location, and Kurogane had trusted him. But he hadn't counted on being deep into an astral trance when the warning came.

Frantically, he wrenched his mind back towards the body that hosted it, seated composedly in a sun-dappled clearing in the mountainside. He could still hear Kazahaya's words trickling into his mind, a faint counterpoint to the images he saw now. He saw what had crossed his wards, and saw Kurogane, prowling under the trees alongside the stream. At least, if Kurogane did not sense danger, then the approaching figure could not be a demon -- no, he saw as he got a better look at it, not a demon.

He reached out to Kurogane through their link, quieter now but still present. _"Kuro-sama!"_ he shouted into the other man's mind, causing him to start and drop his hand to his swords. He looked wildly around at Fai, confusion filling his mind as he saw that Fai's body had not moved -- his eyes closed and his lips still. _"Someone just crossed my outer perimeter, over the ridge five hundred yards to the east! A man -- Nipponese, a soldier maybe, or a hunter. Not one of yours. He's looking for something."_

"Is he hostile?" Kurogane growled aloud, turning to face the eastern ridge with narrowed eyes.

Fai hesitated, weighing impressions, intentions and potential responses. _"Not to you,"_ he finally answered.

 _"My lord?"_ Kazahaya was calling him from the other end of the link; the poor kid sounded panicked, imagining perhaps that Fai was about to come to some gruesome end in the middle of their conversation. _"What's happening? Are you all right?"_

 _"I'm fine."_ He refocused himself to the other mage, re-establishing the channel with an effort; although part of his awareness was still on his surroundings, the cool shade and the approaching stranger. His channel with Kurogane was still alive; he could hear their voices clearly in the crisp mountain air. _"What about Yukito's vision? When did this happen?"_

 _"Oh -- this started about four days ago. Yukito came to us and said that he'd had a vision, that an army of demons was going to attack Nihon very soon. He shared some of it with us -- it was -- hideous..."_ The communication momentarily tailed off in a sort of mental shudder, remembered horror and flickers of dark visions. Fai had no particular need to see the replay of those visions; he'd seem plenty of them close up. _"He showed us and we all agreed, we_ had _to stop it, or they would roll right through Nihon and come to us as well -- "_

Even as he listened to Kazahaya's excited narrative -- it was hard to follow, as the boy was over-stressed and not controlling his end of the psychic link well, his emotions spilling over along with his words -- he could still see and hear through his open channel with Kurogane, and he knew that Kurogane could hear him in turn. The aural feedback and doubled vision was disorienting, but he was reluctant to break the contact; if things went poorly with this confrontation, he might have to break out of the trance in a hurry.

Kurogane positioned himself between Fai's still body and the ridge to the east, setting a firm stance on the muddy ground, and put his hand on his sword, though he did not yet draw it. "Stop right there," he growled, as the stranger made his way up the hillside and became visible through the trees. "Who are you and what do you want?"

 _" -- took the case to Ashura, asking leave to go, and you can imagine how well_ that _went over, in the middle of an offensive campaign against the same country we wanted to go save --"_

"Is that you? Lord Kurogane?" The man came forward, letting the sunlight spill onto his features. He was dressed in a lighter version of the black military armor the demon-hunters wore, mostly leather and chain links instead of iron plate. His black hair was bound with a ragged, dirty bandage around his forehead, and his right arm was supported in a blood-stained sling.

"I might be," Kurogane admitted cautiously. "Depends on who's asking."

"'Cause if so, you're just the man I've been sent to find!" the hunter said excitedly. He had a light, flavorful accent that Fai recognized -- through Kurogane's filtering -- as being native to the southern regions of Nihon. "I've come from Arisugawa, down south near Matsuyama. Princess Tomoyo sent me out here to find you and deliver a message. Said it was very urgent. You _are_ Kurogane Demon-Queller, right? I mean, how many six feet tall demon hunters with red eyes are gonna be wandering around out here?"

 _" -- told him point blank that if we didn't fight them from behind fortifications now, when they were weak and we were strong, then we'd be fighting them out in the open later, a hundred times worse."_

"Yeah, that's me." Kurogane eased his stance fractionally, moving his hand away from the weapon hilt; but he stayed on guard, and did not move away from Fai. "What's the message?"

Instead of answering right away, the man peered around Kurogane, trying to edge around to get a good look at Fai. "Who's that you've got with you? The Princess didn't tell me you'd have anyone else with you," he said. "Hey, is that guy from Ceres? Is he one of them wizards? Is he doing some magic, sitting all folded up like that?"

 _" -- you could see in Yukito's eyes that he was going to go, whether Ashura agreed or not, and we would have to go with him --"_

His tone was oddly free of any hostility, only curiosity; but Kurogane's protective instincts spiked anyway. "It's none of your business who he is or where he's from -- only that he's with me," he snarled, drawing a few inches of steel from the scabbard to show he meant business. "If you try anything with him, you'll try walking home from here with no legs."

 _"Ashura was furious. I've never seen him so angry! I was sure he was going to have Yukito exiled or executed on the spot -- or at least strip us all of our posts then and there -- "_

"Hey! Easy, take it easy, I didn't mean no harm!" The man backed off, laughing and putting his hands in the air. "I was just surprised to see one of those wizards out _here,_ that's all. No reason for me to want to hurt him, anyway. War's over, didn't you know?"

"The war is _what?"_ Kurogane exclaimed in shock.

 _"And then all at once, he changed his mind. He gave us leave. He said, go if we must, but be sure to make a damn good show of it, so that the Nipponese would see exactly how much they owed to us."_

Fai, overhearing this, felt some of his own startlement bleeding back into his conversation with Kazahaya; between his and Kurogane's, it created an echoing feedback effect that momentarily rendered them both speechless.

"Over. Well, for now, anyway, and they're up in Himeji shrine signing a cease-fire right now. It's all in the message Princess Tomoyo sent me to bring you, you see."

Kurogane ground his teeth together, striving for patience. "Why don't you," he enunciated clearly, "just give me the message."

 _"It takes five days as the crow flies to get from Ceres to the southern Nihon border,"_ Fai said. _"How on earth did you -- all of you -- get there so fast?"_

"When the warning came from the capital every one of us left mobilized, mostly trying to get the peasants rounded up and out of there -- no way we had enough people to mount any serious defense. But the _miko_ of the Kishuu shrine there stayed behind. Gods of hearth and home! -- what a woman! Cool as a cucumber as she faced down that demon horde all by herself, she knew exactly what was going to happen to her when her wards came down, but she didn't flinch. Boy! She was a real looker, too! Brains, beauty and bravery all in one package! Say, do you know if it's true what they say in the city -- that the _miko_ have to stay virgin in order to keep their powers --?"

 _"Yukito had this vision -- he took us all down to the tunnels under the palace. Did you _know_ that there was a genuine, honest-to-God functioning legacy Clow ring artifact in the tunnels underneath the palace? The real thing! I'd only ever seen them talked about in books! And it works, even after all this time! All Yukito had to do was feed the activation channels power, and the whole thing spun right up, with no need to establish protocols or set up a remote locus -- right under our noses the whole time, and none of us had any idea --"_

"Stick with the point, please," they said in tandem, weary annoyance at the other's excited rambling flickering quickly across their link.

"The wildest rumors have been flying around, you wouldn't believe half of them if I told you. Half the country is convinced that we've been conquered, that the white witches from the north have overrun the whole country. The other half is saying that Princess Tomoyo called down a blessing on Prince Touya in the Shirasagi courtyard and a host of angels sprang out of the ground to do battle at his side! Now, I wasn't actually there, so I didn't see what really happened, but what I _heard_ was --"

 _"We came out of the other locus of the portal in this filthy room with wooden walls -- we only found out later that it was Shirasaki Castle. If we'd known that was there before now -- but anyway, right outside in the courtyard there was a host of men waiting for us, with fresh horses all saddled and ready to mount. The one in front with all the fancy armor -- Prince Touya, it must have been -- greeted us all like he was expecting us. And you're not going to believe this, Lord Yukito just walks right up to him and_ hugs _him --"_

" -- kissed him right on the mouth, from what _I_ heard --"

 _" -- like they'd known each other for years! That must have been some_ vision _that Yukito had. Obviously they'd been in contact, who knows how or for how long? There was no time to stop and ask questions then, of course; there was no time to waste. Everything was ready for us -- we mounted up and rode hell-bent for leather."_

"-- but _I_ had better things to do. My unit was the closest garrison to the Pine Mountain Gate, when the alarm went up; that's where they hit us the hardest. They couldn't have picked a worse spot for the attack -- we were stripped down to the barest minimum --"

 _"The demons were attacking the wards to the south, down the river from Shirasaki. They couldn't have picked a better spot from our point of view -- it was only a few hours ride from the palace itself. If it had been further away, we never would have made it in time."_

"We sent most of our people away, to try and get the civilians out -- it was just a handful of us left, and the Kishuu _miko_. They warned us what was coming down, but I don't think any of us really had any idea, not until we saw them --"

 _" -- could feel it from miles off, awful stuff. Like having lye poured right into your brain... I don't have to tell you what it feels like, I suppose... "_

" -- like the forest came alive, a wave of darkness coming out of the trees. Some of them were tall as houses, bigger than elephants, but they were _all_ evil-looking creatures. Whoo-ee! If I never see one of those things again it will be too soon -- but I don't have to tell _you_ that, I guess..."

 _" -- not a moment too soon. The wards were already coming apart like a house of cards, spells fraying like cheap lace -- "_

" -- hit the walls like a battering ram, I almost went deaf from the noise, you could just see the cracks spreading through the stone as the whole thing started to come down. The men and I --"

 _" -- were maintaining some kind of defense, but it obviously wasn't going to last long. Yukito pulled us all into a mindshare and we spread out half a mile each to cover as much ground as we could --"_

" -- would have been amazing if I hadn't been about to crap my pants, but the stone just buckled and the whole section of wall crumbled like a waterfall. There she was, standing all by herself against that tide of horror, and all I figured was that if I was gonna die, it might as well be for the sake of a beautiful woman -- by the way, did I mention how gorgeous she was? And how brave? And -- "

 _" -- established wards gave up the ghost right about then, so Yukito put himself right in the breach and told us all to climb up to get the best lines-of-sight that we could -- "_

" -- man all in white, with the weirdest eyes you ever did see, galloped right up to the Kishuu miko and nearly fell of his horse to get to her. Another guy rode up behind him with his sword out, and let me tell you how scared I was, I didn't even know that was Prince Touya till it was all over --"

 _" -- managed to link with the wizard generating the barrier, and had us all feed him power -- "_

" -- grabbed her by the shoulders, and shouted something over the noise and of the rock falling. No idea what, but then the two of them lit up like a bonfire, except all blue, and the shield --"

 _" -- no time for introductions, the demons hit the wards right about then, and killing them was all we could focus on."_

"What a sight! I'll tell it to my grandkids, if I have any; on one side of the wards that horde of howling _oni,_ and them wizards up on the wall blasting left and right with fancy spells. Incredible! Now I'm as much of a patriot as the next man, but me and all the rest of us soldiers who saw them up there -- that's something we'll never forget. Barbarian witches those Ceres wizards might or might not be, but they don't lack for courage."

 _" -- never been so scared in my life, thought I would be sick -- "_

"I'm not one of the elite hunters like you, I'm just an ordinary man -- but I came closer to the _oni_ during that battle than any sane man would want to. Oh -- no offense meant, of course. Took some bad hits and busted my arm up good, but I'm still one of the lucky ones. I'm still standing, after all."

 _"Oh -- and Karura is dead. I'm sorry to have to be the bearer of hard news, but I thought you'd want to know."_

"They killed Rikuou, though -- he was a demon-hunter like you, I thought you should know. Of all the damn wastes!"

That was hard news. "What happened?" Kurogane asked. _"Was it the demons?"_ Fai echoed.

 _"Yes. Oh -- not directly killed by a demon, no. She was standing on top of a piece of wall that hadn't come down yet, in order to get a clear line of sight. One of the demons crashed into it, and the whole thing came down. We tried to warn her, but she didn't get clear in time -- broke her neck under the rubble. Yukito cut her out of the link before the death energy could infect the rest of us, but we all knew when it happened."_

"No, not even a demon! It was one of those damn wizards, if you can believe it. He was fighting on the ground when one of the demons released the swarm. He would have been fine -- he was in full armor -- but a wizard standing near by called down some kind of bolt of lightning on the swarm without even looking who was nearby. The lightning killed them, but then jumped to him, and he fried in his own armor."˙

 _"There was no time to stop and mourn. The walls were coming down in a dozen places by then, and we had our hands full in every direction. With the feedback coming in over the mindshare we could hardly tell friend from foe, but we couldn't afford to break out -- we'd be sitting ducks if we had --"_

" -- not like there was any point in crying over it. The walls were leaking like a sieve, and Prince Touya was sending his troops -- and ours -- off in every direction trying to plug them. We lost more good men than Rikuou that day, he wasn't the worst death by a mile. But I don't think a single man of us would have wished ourselves elsewhere."

 _"It went on for hours... I've never known anything like it. The stink made me sick. I wanted to be anywhere else in the world but there, but we had to be there -- killing and killing."_

"It went on for hours -- not the longest battle I've ever been in, but the ugliest by a long shot. I think I can still smell the reek of _oni_ in my sleep -- probably will for years to come."

"You mean we won?" they asked in tandem.

"I'm standing here, aren't I? Any battle you walk away from is a victory, in my book!"

 _"If you can call it a victory. We stopped the assault, anyway -- but a lot of the demons escaped, just ran off into the wilderness, and it's not like we gained much out of winning, at that. A return to status quo, at best. Eight of us went through that portal to Nihon with Yukito -- "_

"I never thought I would live to see the end of that day, but here I am -- _and_ all of southern Nihon is saved. The thought of what would have happened if they hadn't been there gives me the heebie jeebies, let me tell you. They're up in Himeji right now, being feted as the heroes of the hour -- "

 _" -- Karura, and Kakyou had some kind of bad brush with a demon -- I don't know exactly what happened, Yukito had to cut him out of the link too. He's still breathing, but he's unconscious and he won't rouse. All of the rest of us are sick from spell overload and backburn. He sent _me_ back through the portal to Ruval because I was the only one who could walk straight..."_

"Prince Touya is signing the peace treaty with them now. Of course, who knows what the Empress is going to say about that when she gets back from Esui, I'd love to be a fly on the wall for that, but with Princess Tomoyo presiding over the whole thing, she can hardly argue --"

 _" -- trying to wrangle out some kind of peace treaty in Shirasaki now, but Ashura says he won't consider himself bound to any writ penned by a traitor. Oh, Fai! What are we going to do? Everything is in a shambles up here, but Ashura won't allow me or Guru Clef or General Ko to even _start_ on repairs, even if we knew where to begin!"_

" -- and there's plenty to keep Amaterasu and her army occupied on the southern border right now, what with rebuilding the walls, and defending the populace against the demons that _did_ get away. Which brings me back to that message I had for you from Tomoyo, by the way..."

"You're only just now getting to that?" Kurogane growled wearily.

 _" -- make him see reason, my lord? Ashura has been moping for days, talking about you -- he says now that he realizes you are the only one who has truly been faithful to him. If he'll listen to anyone, he'll listen to you..."_

"... so anyway, so many of us were injured or killed in the attack, that Tomoyo says that you're practically the last demon-hunter we have who's strong enough and powerful enough to hunt down the ones that escaped in southern Nihon. Since I wasn't going to do anyone much good in killing _oni_ or rebuilding walls, not with this busted arm, she sent me out to find you and bring you..."

 _"...home, we need you more than ever to..."_

"...do what nobody else can, Lord Kurogane. So, yeah, that's my message. Come back soon, because you're the..."

 _"...only one who can help us now..."_

"Get home as soon as you can..."

 _"...as soon as you can..."_

"...come home..."

  
\----------------

  
As the sun sank down in the sky, for a long time they just held each other, not speaking. Kurogane had finally convinced the hunter to go away. Having delivered his message, the man obviously expected that they would leave together right away for Nihon, and had seemed very puzzled by Kurogane's insistence that he go back alone. Kurogane had finally solved matters by half-drawing his sword and telling him that he could leave with or without his head, his choice; the man had finally gotten the hint and departed, announcing that he would see the demon-hunter again back in Edo.

 _And will he?_ Fai wondered. _And what about me?_

At last, in the shifting bars of sunlight and shadow, Fai stirred in Kurogane's arms. He spoke quietly, each word seeming heavy on his tongue. "It took the three of us -- Yukito, Clef and I -- years to set up the network of wards and spells with Yukito as the focus. Without them, the upper villages will have no means of contact. They won't be able to call for help in a disaster, and they will have no way to get the supplies they need to survive. There's no way they will be able to complete that work without me. They need me -- my fellow wizards, my people. I can't turn my back on them now. I have to go back home."

Speaking the words aloud made them real, chilled him with a cold dread. He raised his face towards Kurogane's, grasped his hand urgently. "You could come with me. Not as a prisoner this time, but as an guest, an honored representative from Nihon. You said you wanted to learn magic -- there's no better place in the world for you to learn than the academy at Ruval, no better teachers you'll find anywhere. You can teach them about _your_ kind of magic, teach them about swordfighting -- they'll learn too, it'll do them good! Come back with me. Please."

Kurogane refused to meet his eyes, though his hand tightened around Fai's, matching grip for grip. After a long silence -- too many breathless, hammered beats of Fai's heart -- he said lowly, "Even with Seishirou dead, and the first assault against the walls beaten off, there's still so much more to be done. There's no way of knowing how many of the _oni_ got inside the walls, and the peasants who live in southern Nihon would have no defenses against them. As for the ones beyond the walls, who escaped into the wilderness --" He broke off.

"The army is stationed there now," Fai pointed out.

Kurogane shook his head. "They're just ordinary men, they don't _know,_ they can't -- it would take dozens, a hundred of them to stop one demon. How many of them would lose their lives, their souls in the process? Too many of my comrades in arms are dead; only a handful of us are left. Right now, with so many of the _oni_ running loose in the south... they need every one of us they can get. Not a single one of us can be spared."

"You're injured," Fai said urgently. "You need treatment, rest -- surely they can't call on you to fight in this condition?"

"I can still move, I can still walk," Kurogane said, with a little shrug of his good shoulder. "I can still lift a sword and while I can do that... I can fight. But you," and _now_ Kurogane lifted his eyes to meet Fai's, his ruby-red gaze piercing and full of urgency, _"you_ can fight them with me. I know exactly what you're capable of. I'd have no fear about watching my back while you're there -- I've never had _anyone_ I trusted that way before you. Come back with me. Please."

Fai's breath caught, his vision misted with the brief pull of temptation to do just what Kurogane wanted; the two of them, working as a team, fighting in tandem... He drew a long, shaky breath. "I don't think I would be welcomed in Nihon right now," he said, his voice somewhat unsteady. "As an enemy subject, a wizard, _and_ as a demon -- I can't see them welcoming me there."

Kurogane started to object to that, but then closed his mouth; the lines around his eyes, the tightness of his jaw, spoke eloquently of his frustration. "They should appreciate you," he growled. "If not for you, Seishirou would still be alive, and they'd have lost everything."

Fai shrugged a little bit, uncomfortable with the praise. "Besides," he said. "Yukito -- and the others -- they put everything on the line. I still can't believe they... He risked his life to take this one chance, to save Nihon and to end the war. Ashura won't forgive them for that easily; he could still choose to strip them of their positions, or punish them for disloyalty. He might even... if there's _any_ chance he'll listen to me, I have to intercede for them."

Kurogane turned his face away again. "I don't want you going back to him," he said, and his voice was sullen with a strange mixture of protective anger, and jealousy. "Not after he treated you like shit all these times. He sent you off to get tortured and killed without a second thought just because he _thought_ you might have disobeyed him -- what's he going to do to you when you stand up with the other mutineers against him? He might just decide to cut out the middleman and have you killed!"

"He won't do that," Fai said quietly. "No matter how angry he gets -- he's invested too much in me. In all of us, the Wizards of Ceres. He needs us to keep his country going, to keep us strong against Nihon. We're too valuable for him to lose carelessly, and he knows it. That doesn't mean he won't find some other way to punish us, though. With a peaceful resolution in sight, the ministers won't back him for any more aggressive action. He can't push for more war -- but he could still destroy any chance at peace. I have to fight for that chance. I owe the others that -- we owe them _everything_."

"I still don't like it," Kurogane grumbled. "I've seen what he does to you, the scars he leaves on your spirit. I'm afraid for you, can't you see that?"

Fai laughed, startled and painful. "Afraid for _me?_ Oh, Kuro-pon, let's think about this for a minute! _You're_ going off to face a horde of maddened demons, injured and weakened, with no other demon hunters to back you up. The worst that can happen to me is that I'll get yelled at. The worst that could happen to _you_ is that you could be horribly killed and eaten. In the balance of things, don't you think that I've got a _little_ bit more to be afraid for than you?"

He kept his tone light, but Kurogane's body was still close to his, and he knew the other man could feel him trembling. His lover pulled him close, stifling the tremors against his own body, and for a moment he shut his eyes and buried his face into Kurogane's neck, inhaling deeply his scent and trying to block out the rest of the world.

"Is there nowhere we can go to be together?" Fai whispered hopelessly into Kurogane's shoulder.

"Nowhere in your country, or in mine," Kurogane said grimly. Slowly, he tensed up as though preparing for some great blow, inhaling deeply; then he put his hands on Fai's shoulders and pushed him back. There was an awful look on his face, like a man stepping into thin air over a cliff. "But if you ask me -- if you ask me one more time -- to say to hell with it all, throw it all away and go with you somewhere far away -- then I'll go."

For a moment, Fai's heart leapt with a wild and ecstatic hope. Go away? To some far country, where no kings or duties could bother either of them? To cut all ties and be just themselves, Kurogane and Fai, not court wizards or demon hunters or all the rest, to be _together_ \-- but at the same time, the hope was accompanied by an inexplicable flash of anger. How _dare_ Kurogane lay the choice on him that way?

But knowing Kurogane, he knew just how much it had cost the other man to make this offer. And knowing Kurogane, he also knew what his answer had to be.

"I think..." he said, and it came out barely a whisper. Tears blurred in his eyes, frustration and hopeless regret. "I think that if you could do that -- abandon your people and your princess, your duties and your country -- then you would no longer be the man I fell in love with. Your loyalty, your honor -- they make you who you are. To betray that would be to break you."

He saw the relief in Kurogane's eyes, the sudden release of breath and tension, and he knew that he'd made the right choice, even as his throat choked on the next words: "And... I think that if I could do the same... then I would no longer be a man that you could love."

Kurogane didn't answer, except to hold him tight again. Fai buried his face against Kurogane's shoulder, and concentrated on keeping his breathing even, on blinking back the prickling in his eyes.

"It won't be forever," Kurogane said softly, his deep voice rumbling through his frame. "Only a few weeks -- maybe a month, until the worst of it is past. Once you've straightened things out with Ashura -- once they have a chance to build some fortifications in the south, get some effective defenses on line -- then you could come south again, or I could come to you."

"You can't know that," Fai whispered. "Once we go back to our home countries, things won't be under our control any more. It could be months. Or years." _Or never._

"Not never," Kurogane said firmly. "If nothing else... there's still the matter of Seishirou's master."

Fai drew a long breath. "Ah. Yes, him." After a long moment he added, "Is it really okay -- to just leave things like they are?"

"I don't see that we have any choice," Kurogane said, eyes narrowing. "If he was backing Seishirou, then he's lost a lot of his players on the field. It'll take him time to recuperate that loss, come up with some new crazy scheme for harvesting power. He's no more a threat to us now than he was before -- and he'll still be here when we're ready to face him again."

"I can do research," Fai said, and his voice steadied as he did. "See if I can find any records in our archives that might lead to him -- or if nothing else, try to learn more about conjuration. If we're going to find and destroy him, we'll need to know."

Kurogane nodded. "And I'll do the same," he said. "Until things calm down at home; until our other duties free us enough to pursue him. Until we can be together again. You'll be fine. I'll be fine. You'll see."

"You'd better be," Fai said. He could tell Kurogane was trying to reassure himself as much as Fai, trying to _make_ it be true. He drew in a sudden, urgent breath. "Kuro-chan. I want you to promise me one thing."

Kurogane raised an eyebrow in invitation. Fai bit his lip, then blurted out, "Don't take any more risks, okay? Don't jump into more trouble than you can handle. I want you to _promise_ me that you won't get into any fights you don't know that you can handle, and that when all of the demons are dead, you'll still be standing."

Kurogane nodded gravely, his eyes dark and contemplative. "All right," he said at last. "I promise. But in return, you have to promise one thing for _me."_

"Anything," Fai said immediately.

Kurogane snorted. "You didn't even hear what I was going to ask for. I want you to promise me, _swear_ that when you get home to Ceres, you'll _eat."_

A bolt of fear and anguish shot through Fai, and he stiffened up. "I --" _No, no, I can't. How can I promise that? Does he have any idea what he's asking?_ He got hold of the wild spasm of denial; of course Kurogane did. No one alive knew any better.

He bit his lip and swallowed hard, before he answered. "I can't... that's not just up to me," he said weakly. The logical part of his mind knew that he couldn't refuse, but his heart still rebelled. "It's -- it's too heavy a burden to ask of anyone -- I wouldn't even have asked it of you, if it hadn't been so --"

"I _know_ ," Kurogane said, with a dangerous flash of his eyes. "I think I know better than anyone else alive just what I'm asking. But if I'm promising to stay alive for your sake, then you'd _damn_ well better give me something to come back to!"

Fai dropped his head, staring at the ground. Kurogane sighed, and pulled him close again, tucking his chin against his shoulder. "It's not just for me, you know," he said quietly. "You have people in Ceres who love you, who want you to be happy and well just as much as I do. It's _not_ a burden on them, to help you and keep you alive. I know that they'll give you what you need, as long as you _tell_ them what you need... and if you can bring yourself to accept what they offer."

"All right," Fai whispered reluctantly.

"Promise me," Kurogane insisted.

"I promise," he said. "I'll... do what I have to, to stay alive." _So that you'll have something to come back to._

  
\----------------

  
Dawn came.

And they went their separate ways.

Kurogane would follow the trail of his errant messenger until he caught up with him, and they would ride together back to Nihon. Fai had no companion, nor any trail to follow, but he needed none; the ley-lines tugged his heart north, and home, like a passenger pigeon.

He rode slowly, letting Bella pick her way, eyes unseeing. The long knife shifted against his skin as he moved, and he remembered the previous night -- their last night together.

They had not made love again -- neither of them had been in the mood. But Kurogane proved to have something else in mind, a requiem no less intimate.

"Don't argue with me on this," Kurogane had said, his voice steel. "If we have to go our separate ways, then we have to, but I'm at least going to make sure you start off on this journey well-fed."

Fai shook his head. "You're still weak from the blood you lose before," he'd said then. "And from the fight in Seishirou's lair. You can't weaken yourself any more before you go into another fight."

 _"I'll_ be fine," Kurogane shrugged this off. "I know my body better than anyone. I don't mean that you should drain my dry, like the last time. Just take a little bit. Enough to last you back to Ceres, and through whatever you have to face there."

Fai wavered; Kurogane sensed his weakness, and pressed the advantage. "I'll be able to focus on _my_ task much better if I know you're all right," he argued, somewhat unfairly. "It'll be a weight off my mind, so I won't have any distractions."

"That's some awfully twisty-bendy logic there, Kuro-rin," Fai couldn't help but observe. "Whatever happened to my straight-as-an-arrow hunter?"

Kurogane snorted. "If you want to talk twisty logic? I'd say I learned it from the best."

As Fai tried to work out whether he'd just been insulted or complimented, Kurogane reached into his boot and drew out the long knife; the weapon he'd given to Fai on their first meeting, which had changed hands between them half a dozen times since. Holding Fai's eyes, Kurogane stretched out his arm, and brought the knife down to his wrist and made a clean, shallow cut.

Ruby blood sprang to the surface, and Fai's lips parted involuntarily as the bright metal smell sang through the air. The whole world seemed to come into focus, centering on that welling stream of blood; he found he'd moved forward without even intending to do so, and jerked to a stop, dragging his eyes back up to Kurogane's face.

"I won't force you to do anything you don't want to do," Kurogane said quietly. "But _I_ made this offer. And it's going to flow whether you drink or not."

"Oh, Kuro-sama," Fai said, hopeless fondness filling his voice. "Whatever am I going to do with you?"

He stepped forward, and took hold of Kurogane's arm, feeling the solid heat of his flesh beneath his hands. He knew he ought to be disgusted, with himself, with what he was doing; but it smelled and tasted and felt like _Kurogane,_ and that could only be right.

He pressed his mouth to the cut on Kurogane's wrist, and drank.

It was nothing like it had been before, that night in the dungeon. That had all been terror and pain, ravening hunger and frenetic desperation. He had hardly been aware of whose blood was in his mouth, of whose body drained lifeless in his hands. Now he couldn't _not_ be aware of him, the quickening of his breath, the staccato beat of his pulse. _Just don't let me hurt you,_ he thought.

Kurogane's own familiar thought came back almost immediately. _I won't. Try not to underestimate me, will you?_

Startlement pulsed between them both, at this unwitting revelation. _The bond, it's back?_ He wasn't sure which of them had asked that. _I thought it had faded away._

 _It must come and go with the blood,_ Fai reasoned, and felt an echo of Kurogane's agreement. _The soul follows the blood. In a moment like this, two souls touch..._

He could still taste the blood on his lips, sweeter than wine; could still feel it burn in his throat. Could still feel Kurogane's presence in his mind, beloved and inescapable. With every mile that passed between them, he felt it fade a little more, and his last hope that they could somehow maintain this connection over distance faded with it.

They both had their duties. They each had their loyalties. It was enough that they were no longer in direct conflict, each a danger to the other; it would have to be enough, at least until the time came that love and duty could lie together once more.

Surely it was the bright morning light, dazzling off the distant icecaps, that burned his eyes, blurred his vision? Fai shook his head, rubbing one hand over the persistent sting. No point in wallowing in misery; Kurogane surely wouldn't approve. _Look forward,_ he'd say, _keep your eyes on the job in front of you. Let tomorrow take care of itself._

Home, then, for now. Home.


End file.
